Fate's Guardian
by PeaceHeather
Summary: Set roughly a year post-Thor:TDW, reference to events in Guardians of the Galaxy. Pretty much a shameless fixit fic. No pairings. A being shows up on Earth looking for Loki, the Avengers get pulled in to see what's going on, and they all learn what Loki has *really* been up to all this time. I dunno, I was in a mood to write something like this, so I did.
1. Chapter 1

The first time She appeared, it was in Tokyo, which, _appropriate_, if any major city was going to get a bizarre monster thing cruising through the streets it would almost have to be Tokyo, right? There was probably a rule, somewhere, the "Godzilla Ordinance" or something. Only this was no giant lizard.

News footage showed what looked like a statue made of transparent, molten glass, standing head-to-roofline beside the single-story shops, towering over the humans. Like, easily ten feet tall. She had a faint glow to Her, although that might have been because curved clear glass has a tendency to catch and refract the light around it. The only thing anyone could see inside Her body were three spheres, situated in a line from just below the throat to just above where a pelvis would be; one red, one black, one white. They all glowed brightly—even the black one, which was just weird.

Being weird, naturally, got SHIELD's attention, and they, naturally, called the Avengers in to "handle" it.

Everybody who saw the being called it a "She", even though it wasn't obviously female. But it wasn't obviously male, either, and apparently that was enough to call it a girl, people all over the planet being both obsessed with gender and kinda sexist. At least the voice was more or less feminine, toward the low end for a woman but reasonably alto rather than bass or anything. But honestly, that was pretty much it for femininity, and there wasn't a whole lot going for Her in the "human" department either. There was debate over whether it was an alien being or some kind of funky tech.

Her second appearance was in Shanghai; again with the wandering the streets, again with the screaming crowds, and this time with an eventual military action that had no effect on Her whatsoever. It wasn't like she was still standing when the smoke cleared. The mortar rounds didn't even explode—they vanished, and She just kept on walking as if She hadn't noticed there was even a threat. Luckily, "no effect" meant the attack didn't make Her mad, either.

She made her way west-ish across Asia, hitting all the very largest cities: Seoul, followed by Manila, then Jakarta, Indonesia. A couple stops in India. Dhaka, in Bangladesh. In each place, day or night, on news programs or on YouTube uploads, people would see the same thing. She would show up, walk among the streets, and stop now and again to address the people, then eventually vanish; like, literally vanish, simply turning to the left, taking a step, and disappearing. Which was irritating, because half the time the Avengers weren't allowed into whatever country it was to confront Her, and the other half they'd show up only to find She had already gone.

It took a few stops for people to stop running and screaming, and listen to what the alien statue thing had to say. "She said She was looking for someone," reported a few bystanders. "A guardian," whatever that meant.

Whatever She was, She was making an effort not to be hostile. No attacking, no property damage, no Godzilla rampages, and eventually the crowds caught on. In Indonesia a kid walked right up to her, said, "This is for you," and put a flower in the palm of Her hand.

"Why do you do this?" She asked.

"I see what you are," said the kid.

She replied, "Very good, little volva" (which drove the SHIELD analysts nuts, because that wasn't even a word in Malay or in any of the other main languages in that part of Indonesia). "You see much that your kinsmen do not. Do you know the guardian whom we seek?"

"No, sisters," and again, SHIELD was scrambling and the professional geeks were having a field day, "I have never heard that name."

"Then we must continue our search elsewhere," said She.

SHIELD interviewed the kid (of course they did) and all that was really uncovered was that her name was Aditi, she was eight, and she had a knack for perceptiveness that according to SHIELD suggested some kind of clairvoyant ability. Her local temple had already taken it as a given that she would go there to train as a priestess once she was old enough. The analysts figured "volva" meant something like "oracle" or "seer," but that was all they could figure out.

By the time She hit Karachi, in Pakistan, the general population around the world had caught on, and started watching for Her to appear instead of running away whenever She did. There were websites tracking Her progress across the world, faithfully listing sightings by location, time, duration, everything that an excited nerd could think of to record. So yeah. Websites. Blogs. Photo galleries. Supposedly there was even a cult set up to worship Her. Naturally there were conspiracy theorists, and a handful of poor saps claiming to have been abducted by Her underlings. Whatever. A lot of people were watching to see when She would show up, so they could have a chance to talk with Her themselves.

It was in Greater Cairo that the timing finally worked out, and a news crew was on hand to catch Her first statement to the populace there. Translated from the Arabic:

"We seek the guardian known as Loki."

* * *

><p>Loki.<p>

Wasn't he supposed to be dead?

"Fucking _Loki._ Shit." Everybody on the team had said that at least once, with the exception of Steve because profanity was unbecoming, or something. But he was still thinking it.

After Cairo, She did a quick tour through the rest of Africa, but apart from Lagos in Nigeria, not many locations there had the sheer masses of people that seemed to attract Her, so it wasn't long before She showed up in Europe.

Istanbul; Moscow; and then finally, _finally, _She turned up in Paris, and did Her thing, and someone was able to answer Her with more than a "Nope, never heard of 'em."

"I do not know this person," said the bystander, a youngish hipster-looking guy who stepped out of the crowd at her question, "but I recall hearing his name after an incident in Germany last year. And there are legends that someone called Loki was a god, but that was a long time ago. Another culture. Not here."

"Loki has come to your world before," She said. "That is irrelevant. We seek the guardian who protected your realm, recently."

"I am sorry, great lady," said the bystander, "all I know of him is what I heard. Germany. Munich, I think. Or it may have been a different city."

She nodded. "These are greater tidings than we have yet received in our quest. We shall smile upon you henceforth." Which was another sentence that made the SHIELD analysts go a little giddy and panicky all at once.

"Wait!" said the guy, just as she was preparing to vanish. "Great lady, if I may?"

She turned back, and the crowds grew silent. "What is your petition, messenger?"

"I would like to know—we all would like to know—what are you?"

"We are the sisters of Yggdrasil," She said, or at least that was what the linguistic people came up with. Apparently knowing that she was looking for Loki helped them figure out a couple things. For one, a "volva" was a type of seer or witch from Norse mythology, like maybe a shaman or something, who could intercede with the Norns on behalf of the worshipers of Norse deities. For another, they were pretty sure She was talking about "Yggdrasil", known in Norse mythology as the "World Tree," where all the "Nine Realms" were supposed to live. According to Thor, the Nine Realms all had similar atmosphere and gravity to Earth, and their intelligent life forms were all at least a little bit similar to humans. Which was pretty cool.

They still didn't know what it meant to be a "sister of Yggdrasil", much less "sisters", plural. They still didn't know why She was looking for Loki, either, and they _really _didn't know why the hell She'd be on friendly terms with him, given everything the little shit had done the last time he'd shown up on Earth.

Still. It was something of a lead. They knew where She was headed, if nothing else, and for _obvious _reasons, SHIELD was able to get clearance to send the Avengers into Germany, so they went ahead and did that. The team set up in Stuttgart, figuring She would get there eventually, and lo and behold.

"We seek the guardian known as Loki," She said. Whole crowds of people confirmed that, yeah, they knew who the hell he was.

Her oversize glass self didn't exactly have a lock on facial expressions, but She seemed perturbed at the response She was getting. So Captain America put his best foot forward.

"Ma'am," he said, "Loki attacked people when he was last here. In this city he terrorized a crowd of over two hundred people and removed a man's eye. Another few hundred were killed and thousands injured when he orchestrated an alien invasion over New York. We don't mean any disrespect, but we don't get why you're calling him a guardian of anything."

At this, the spheres inside Her body flashed brighter, and everyone got ready for a potential session of shit-hitting-fan; instead, though, all She did was tilt Her head and kinda smile.

"Do you not? Perhaps we will show you. You fought the guardian; did you also speak with him?"

"Uh, yeah," said Iron Man. "Guy was a few cards short of a full deck."

She stepped closer and bent low, and damn if it didn't look like She could see right through that mask and into the very soul of the guy inside the suit. "We are aware of the role he played." After a nerve-wracking moment, She stood and looked around. "We feel the traces of his presence here. Whither did he go after your battle?"

"Uh, well, the main battle wasn't here, princess. You want to take a look at New York? There's plenty of _traces _of him there. We're still cleaning them up, as a matter of fact."

"Very well," She said, and stepped back and did the thing where she got ready to disappear.

"Oh-ho-_ho _no, you don't," said Iron Man. "We have questions for you. Why you came to our world, first of all; why the hell you're looking for a psychotic egomaniacal killer would be the second one."

"Is the guardian in this New York?" She asked.

"No," said the captain, before Iron Man could butt in. "After we defeated him, he was taken back to Asgard for punishment."

"Punishment." The spheres in Her torso flared brightly. She stood tall and proud, and it was kind of a wonder, since up to this point all they'd gotten was sort of a robot feel off of Her—go to city, ask for Loki, leave. Rinse, repeat. Now here She was, showing emotions… at least, insofar as a giant, melted-glass statue-person could show emotions.

"To answer your first question, we came in search of the guardian, Loki. In answer to your second, we bear him tidings he would wish to hear."

"What, got another world for him to go try and take over?" muttered Hawkeye. Black Widow elbowed him discreetly.

She studied them all for a moment, surrounded by the gathered crowds and cameras of Stuttgart. "These tidings are not yours to hear," She said finally, "but you demand truth, and are ignorant of Loki's true intent in coming to Midgard. You are protectors of this world in your own right. Further, you amuse us. We will do him, and you, a service."

The idea of being offered something that would somehow be good for both them _and_ Loki was, again, more than a little dodgy.

"What service is that?" asked Captain America.

"Our tidings are for the guardian to hear," said She; "if the guardian is in Asgard, then we will go to Asgard…"

She took a step toward them, and the Avengers all watched as buildings just… _morphed _into golden pillars and walls, and the pavement into buttery marble floor, and the crowds were replaced with a handful of soldiers and people in fancy outfits, all startling and reacting in various ways, moving toward them or away, as the team all looked around in shock.

"…and we will bring you with us."

* * *

><p><strong>A few people have heard that I have a couple of Loki fics in the works. This is neither of the ones I talked about. Too many ideas for our favorite trickster.<strong>


	2. Chapter 2

Yeah, okay, there were soldiers headed toward them with spears or whatever, but the first order of business was to get Bruce calmed down. _He'd_ argued that they wouldn't need the Hulk, and _they'd_ argued that they would still need a cameraman and science monkey, so he'd been there with them, and now he was here. Asgard, apparently. Which would be awesome if Bruce wasn't looking all kinds of shaky right then.

"Whoa, whoa, hey Brucie, look at me. Look at me." Tony had his helmet retracted and one hand—gently!—on each of Bruce's shoulders. "No, no, don't look at them, they're not important, look at me. Look at me. That's it, just breathe."

"I know how to breathe, Tony," replied Bruce after a couple seconds. Still shaky, but back out of the danger zone.

"Good to know."

"State your business, intruders." This from a guy in armor not half as impressive as Tony's, but then Thor's armor hadn't been all that impressive either and he could kick plenty of ass. Looking around, they were surrounded, and none of these faces were all that cheerful.

"This wasn't our idea!" said Barton quickly. "We were talking with... _that,_" he said, jerking a thumb over his shoulder at the big glass statue, "and She got the bright idea to bring us with Her to… I'm guessing we're in Asgard."

"These are warriors of Midgard," She confirmed, "who demanded to know our business in Asgard. We decided it would be more effective to simply show them."

"And what is your business…" the leader eyed Her up and down for a second, "…and your name, lady?"

It was hard to tell, but Tony was pretty sure She smirked at the man. "We are the sisters of Yggdrasil, and you will bring us, and the mortals, before Odin, son of Bor."

Tony hadn't expected that to actually work. But apparently bringing up "Yggdrasil" in conversation was the equivalent of "knowing people" back on Earth, because next thing Tony knew, they were in. Well. They were in, after a couple of hoops to jump through and a little bit of kerfuffle (admittedly, perfectly reasonable to ask the foreigners to leave their weapons at the door, but the suit wasn't going anywhere).

"Does it help if we tell you we're friends of Thor's?"

The guard gave him a truly impressive side-eye. "You will not like the outcome if it turns out that you lie, mortal."

Tony shrugged. "So go ask him. To be honest I'm a little surprised he hasn't turned up already."

Big gold room with big gold pillars, and a big gold throne at the far end. Tony half-expected the guy sitting on it to be big and gold, too.

"So is that Odin?" asked Tony.

"That is the All-Father, king over the Nine Realms," said the guard. "You will show respect to him."

"No," said the big glass statue, and Tony fought the urge to face-palm. She turned to look up at the dais. "We owe you no obeisance, son of Bor."

"Ah yes," said the guy. "You, who call yourself a sister of Yggdrasil. What does that mean?"

"Do you not recognize us?" She smirked. "The people of Midgard once told stories claiming that you sacrificed your eye to Mimir's Well in exchange for wisdom. You, and we, know better, don't we, Deceiver?"

Odin ignored her for a moment. "You are humans, from Earth," he said. "Claiming to be friends of Thor. What is your business here, in Asgard?"

"They are our guests," said the big glass statue. "They, like you, demanded to know our business. We brought them here that they might observe, and learn the truth."

"And what truth is that? Why have you come?"

She said the same damn thing to him that She'd said over a dozen times around the world back home. "We seek the guardian, Loki."

"No." His tone flat, final. Tony, anticipating trouble, stepped back, slowly and carefully.

Her tone was equally flat in reply. "We will speak with him, Odin, son of Bor, son of Buri, Odin whose mother was Bestla of the line of Ymir," and Tony watched as the old guy's eye widened in surprise, "whether you give us _permission_ or no. You will bring the guardian before us, or we will tear down your palace and your precious city, stone by stone, until we are before _him_."

Whoa-kay, then. Tony snagged Bruce's collar and took another step back. "Can I just say that none of us are on board with this plan, Your Kingliness?" he piped up. "I mean, we were part of the crew that helped kick Loki's ass the last time he was on earth. If he's in prison or whatever, he can stay there, far as we're concerned."

"Your neutrality is duly noted," said Odin. "I trust you will keep to it." After a long couple of seconds, Odin gestured to a guard and nodded; the soldier took off, presumably for the dungeons or whatever, and Odin leaned back in his big gold throne and said nothing.

And said nothing.

Annnd said nothing… until finally Cap spoke up. "Thor mentioned an attack, the last time we spoke with him," he said. "I, uh, I hope the recovery is going well."

"We have rebuilt." Right. Not big on speeches, then. "Your concern is appreciated." Tony fought not to raise an eyebrow at that, because the words said one thing and the _tone _said he could give a fat damn what the Earthlings thought. Ass.

It was a relief when they all heard the rattle of chains, way the hell down at the other end of the throne room. Tony turned to look, and damn. That was a little taste of _Silence of the Lambs, _there, with the way they had Loki all trussed up. Four guards around him, two more holding freaking chains that came around Loki's waist like some kind of leash… as they got closer Tony could see that not only were his hands manacled together and attached to the waist chain, they were also connected by yet another length of chain to a heavy-metal-hardcore collar—a _collar_, for God's sake—that looked like it had to weigh a ton.

All this for a guy in bare feet and rough-spun green pajamas. Of course, he didn't seem even the least bit fazed by all the hardware, and, y'know, New York happened because of him, so maybe it wasn't overkill.

He looked them all up and down appraisingly, before noticing Her and stopping dead in his tracks. The guards yanked on his chains and forced him forward, and Tony bit back a wince as he staggered forward, his balance hampered by the shackles on his ankles. There was a flicker of what Tony thought might be curiosity or even wonder on his face, before he peeled his attention away from Her and the corner of his mouth curled in a smirk. "Hello, _Odin._ Am I to provide entertainment for your visitors, this evening?"

Odin ignored him, but Tony caught the way Loki's eyes narrowed in annoyance. "You wished to speak to him," he said to Her; "speak, then, and begone. Asgard does not welcome any who call themselves friend to Loki."

"You forget your place, Bor's son," said She, and Loki blinked in surprise, before his eyebrows went up in amusement. "We have already told you, we do not bow to your whims. Nor are we pleased that you have caged the greatest hero of the Nine Realms as though he were nothing more than a beast."

"He committed crimes for which he must be punished," began Odin, but She held up a big glass hand to cut him off.

"Be silent, Bor's son. You are willfully ignorant, and we will hear no more from you." She waved her hand, and all the chains on Loki… crumbled. Freaking _crumbled_, like dry sand, except that sand didn't glow gold and vanish once it hit the floor.

At this, Odin leapt to his feet, the guards leveled their spears and drew swords, and Tony began to actually worry. Naturally everyone else who was still carrying pulled their weapons at this point, including Tony with the suit (and of _course _Natasha hadn't turned over everything she was carrying), but all Loki did was rub at the side of his neck where the collar had been, and look at Tall-Clear-and-Shiny suspiciously.

"I appreciate the gesture, illustrious ladies," said Loki, "but what is the meaning of this?" Respectfully, which was kind of something Tony hadn't thought Loki actually _did._

"We bear tidings, guardian, which will delight you to hear," said She.

Loki tipped his head in curiosity. "And why do you call me 'guardian'?"

The statue stepped closer, her movement making a faint chiming sound in the quiet of the hall as She caressed his face with one transparent hand. "Because, dear child, we know what you have done for Yggdrasil. You have our gratitude, and our favor henceforth for your service. It is why we have come personally to speak to you." She paused, then added, "And because we suspected that the Deceiver would bar any volva or lesser Norn whom we might send in our stead."

"Loki," said Odin severely, "you will tell us what this creature is, at once."

Apparently, ignoring each other was just a thing this family did. Loki didn't even look at Odin as he asked softly, "Does he truly not know you, great ones?"

"We have told him we are the sisters of Yggdrasil," She said. "But the descendant of Ymir is blind in one eye, and blinded by hubris in the other."

"So it would seem," said Loki. Still soft, and that expression of wonder was back on his face.

Tony couldn't resist an unanswered question, it was his curse. "Care to enlighten the rest of us?" he asked.

Loki acknowledged him with a nod. "Your people, at least, can be forgiven your lack of understanding…" He smirked up at the guy on the dais. "Come, All-Father, can you truly not put the pieces together? What do our most sacred texts tell us? Whom do we refer to in our legends as the Three Sisters? Who is it that nurtures Yggdrasil itself from the waters of Urdhr's Well? Whom do we know who bear the colors black, and white, and red?" He shook his head. "Can you not tell that this form is no living being, but a vessel for Their united consciousness?"

Wait; so this thing was a machine after all?

"The Fates," said Bruce suddenly. All heads turned to him, and he blinked. "I mean, the Greeks and Romans called them the Fates. Or the Furies. The Norse myths called them the Norns." He shrugged at the looks his teammates were all giving him. "What? We had a couple of Norse gods show up, I did some reading. Quite a few cultures had either a trinity of goddesses, or a single goddess with three aspects: Maiden, Mother, and Crone."

"Past, present, and future. The weavers of fate," agreed Loki. "There are other Norns throughout the realms, many others in fact, but these three are foremost among them. Their power is beyond comprehension." He turned to the… what did he call it, vessel? "Am I permitted to call you by name?"

Okay. Loki being polite and respectful was just weird, and that was without even adding in the chains and the pajamas.

Odin, naturally, interrupted. "Urdhr, who rules all that has come to pass," he said as he came down the steps. "Verdhandi, who has dominion over the present moment, that which currently is. Skuld, who oversees what will or should or ought to be."

She—or maybe it was "They"—whatever, _the statue_ turned to look over its shoulder at Odin. "Does it displease you not to be the center of attention, Bestla's child? We advise you to get used to it. We did not come here to speak to _you_."

"You said you bore me tidings?" Loki smoothed the front of his pajama shirt. "I cannot imagine what would be of such great import that the Three Sisters themselves would come personally to share it with me."

She held out her hand, palm up. "Do you recognize this being?" Light flickered in Her palm, and then there was a figure standing there, about eye level to all of them, a couple feet tall. Some kind of alien, ugly, with a veil over the top of its face and some truly freaky wire headgear around its mouth and jaw. It stood hunched and leaning on a staff of some kind.

Loki _hissed,_ eyes wide, and stumbled backward with his teeth bared and his hands coming up into a defensive position. There was a ripple of green light along his hands and arms, just barely there and gone.

"We see that you do," said the Norns. "Fear not, guardian: our tidings to you are that he is dead." The image in Her hand flickered again and vanished, leaving Loki standing there trying to hide what Tony recognized as a full-on panic attack, and everyone else wondering what the hell was going on. Even Barton was giving the guy an odd look.

"Wh-what?" He was blinking like crazy and breathing like he'd just run a mile. "What? How?"

"Another whom Thanos thought to take as a vassal. He slew the Other, then was later slain himself when he attempted to claim the Orb of Power for his own."

Loki swallowed, his face pale. "So Th—so the Titan holds the Orb, now?"

"No," She reassured him. "It was taken from him, contained by other guardians, and hidden beyond his reach."

Loki shut his eyes and actually swayed on his feet.

"Loki?" asked Odin, and his voice was warmer-sounding than Tony would have thought he was capable of. "My son. What is the meaning of this?" Which was a question Tony had been about 0.8 seconds away from asking, himself.

"You do not deserve to know, son of Bor," said the Norns, "but we have decreed that the time is right for the truth to be revealed. To all of you. Prepare a chamber," She commanded one of the guards; "Summon Thor," She said to another. "We, the Three Sisters, will sit in council with our fellow guardians of Yggdrasil."

"Weren't you supposed to be dead?" asked Tony, as they all trundled into what passed for a conference room in a big gold palace full of Norse gods. Still big and gold, but open along one whole wall to a huge balcony supported by graceful columns. The center of the room held a firepit that was actually in the center of a long, low table surrounded by cushions with a couple of curved benches at the corners. Off to one side, somebody had set up what looked like a decent-sized lunch buffet. Loki was still surrounded by guards, but none of them seemed quite sure what to do with themselves now that he wasn't chained up like somebody's really kinky Christmas present.

The Norns spoke up before Loki could respond to Tony. "All will be revealed in time."

"I would prefer we answer that question _now_," said a new voice. They all turned to see Thor coming through the door, looking as angry as Tony had ever seen him. He didn't appear to even notice the other people in the room, stalking into the room with his fists clenched and making a beeline for Loki. Once he reached his brother he grabbed him by the shirtfront and shoved him up against a pillar, hard. "How could you do this to me a second time?! How could you lie? Where have you been for the past year—what schemes of yours will I have to dismantle now? _How could you do this to me?!_"

Loki, who had been struggling against Thor's hold, froze and looked up at Thor in shock. "Where have I—you really didn't know," he said in realization. "Odin never even bothered to tell you."

"Tell me what?" A flash of lightning streaked across the sky just outside the balcony.

"And here I thought you were just refusing to visit me, again, while you sulked that I had survived."

Thor shoved Loki into the column again. "Speak plainly, Loki, before I lose all patience with you."

Loki shoved him off. "Use your eyes, you—overgrown ox-brain. When was the last time you saw me dressed like this?" As Thor looked him up and down, he went on, "No doubt _your father_ will find some way to justify his not telling you, but I've been in the palace dungeons for the past several months. Perhaps he will claim he was trying to 'protect you from the truth'. It's something of a pattern for him."

Big Thunder stepped back, shaking his head. "He… no. He wouldn't—"

And because Odin had been enough of an ass that even the Fates didn't like him, Tony spoke up. "They brought him in all chained up and surrounded by guards, big guy."

"But you—I don't—you tricked me into believing you dead. I mourned you—again! I told Father you died a hero."

Loki glanced away for a second, then reached down and peeled his prison shirt off. "Go on," he said, "touch. You know my illusions are not solid."

They all could see what he was talking about: a vicious-looking, raised scar, a good four inches long, high on the left side of Loki's chest next to his nipple. Whatever had caused it had been recent enough that the scar was still that weird pinkish purple, stark against Loki's pale skin. Thor brushed his thumb across it, and his back was to Tony but he could still hear the hitch in the big guy's breathing.

"I was as surprised as you when I opened my eyes and discovered myself not on Helheim's shores," said Loki. "And as displeased about it as Odin, no doubt."

"Don't say such things," breathed Thor. "Brother—"

Loki turned away from him to put his shirt back on, and Tony grimaced when he caught a glimpse of a matching scar high on Loki's back… along with a bunch of faded white marks that looked like whip cuts. Loki froze for an instant as Thor rested his palm on that scar, then finished dressing. He turned back, and leaned in close to say something in Thor's ear; Jarvis picked it up for him: "What I said to you, brother, as I lay in the sand—what I said to you, I meant."

Thor took his brother's head in his hands and pressed their foreheads together. "Do not do that to me again," he said quietly. "I will beg you if I must. You are worthy of Valhalla, in my eyes, but do not go there yet."

"You never told me Loki died a hero's death, Thor," said Odin, and the two younger men turned to give him identical looks of displeasure. "It was not me you spoke to, but Loki, once again usurping the throne for himself."

"And a moment ago I was _your son _once more." Loki rolled his eyes. "No. It was me disguised as a soldier, reporting myself dead so that I could finally be rid of any attachment to this wretched realm, and you collapsing into the Odinsleep _again. _I merely assumed the throne until you woke, while Thor returned to Midgard. Just like last time, minus the treachery on the part of my subjects."

Now Odin finally raised his voice. "You deceived all of Asgard!"

"I _led _Asgard," said Loki with disdain. "Oversaw the recovery of _your _precious domain from the attack. Put defenses in place, changed policies to prevent another incursion. I even watched over _you, _to make certain you would survive the Sleep and not drown in your own magic and die, much though the realms would have been improved if you had. And let me be clear, so that you will _not_ attempt to take the credit, and Thor will _not_ assume I've miraculously returned to my family's loving bosom: my actions had nothing to do with caring for you. I wished to honor my mother's memory, and to protect my brother's heart, which despite your hatefulness would surely have broken if you had died so soon after your queen."

And Tony might not have been the best at reading people, but it kinda looked to him like Odin hadn't considered any of that before. "Loki…"

"Oh, be silent," he snapped. "I have no interest in listening to you heap disdain upon me and then expect me to be grateful to you for leaving me alive to hear it."

"Do you really dare to speak of deceit, child of Ymir's line?" asked the Norns. "You dare to accuse Loki while refusing to answer for your part in concealing his existence from his brother? You are a hypocrite, grasping with the last of your strength at what power remains to you, and clinging to it greedily, all the while pretending that you act for the good of your sons, or for Asgard, or for the Nine Realms." She drew Herself up to her full height and glared down her nose at the king. "You are here, in this chamber, on our sufferance. Do you annoy us further, and we will evict you. Anger us sufficiently, and we will cut your thread short. You are close enough to the end of your days as to make little difference, in the grand scheme of things."

Odin did not answer—Tony would have thought at least a fake apology would have been polite—but he did go a little pale, and sat down.

Thor looked around at the rest of the room, with his hand still on Loki's shoulder; took in the gathered Avengers, and the big glass statue, and Odin, and shook his head, bewildered. "I have so many questions, I hardly know where to begin."

"Short version," put in Hawkeye, gesturing toward Her, "_that's_ supposed to be a vessel for three big Norns, She's spent the past couple weeks wandering Earth looking for Loki, and when we asked Her why, she brought us all here. She claims he's some kind of hero, and we're all just _dying_ to hear the story they've cooked up together."

"Norns?" asked Thor under this breath.

"The Three Sisters," supplied Loki. Thor gaped at Loki, who only shrugged. Apparently deciding to leave that alone for now, he turned back to Barton.

"My brother is a hero," said Thor. "He saved my life and that of the Lady Jane Foster, more than once. I believed him to have died saving mine a final time, and he avenged our mother's murder besides. That he survived does not lessen the bravery of the act."

"He has been braver than you know, son of Odin," said the vessel. "The time has come for his deeds to become known."

"Forgive me, ladies," said Loki cautiously, "but why?"

"You are but one guardian, child; the Nine Realms require more. You need allies, and it may be that these here assembled will be some of them."

* * *

><p><strong>I wasn't sure what sort of reaction this story would get, since I'm not heavily involved in the fandom or anything and it's hard to get the word out if you don't know where to post. So thank you to everyone who has read so far, and especially to those who have reviewed. You're very encouraging.<strong>


	3. Chapter 3

Barton, naturally, lost his shit; Cap ended up holding him back and then pulling him off to one side of the room until he could get it together again, while Natasha folded her arms and gave Loki the Glare of Death.

"You've gotta admit, that's gonna be pretty hard to swallow," said Bruce.

"Listen, and then decide, son of Brian," She replied, and Tony watched as the muscles in Bruce's jaw twitched.

"Brother?" Thor still hadn't left Loki's side and couldn't seem to make himself stop touching him either, which, understandable given that he'd thought Loki was dead this whole time. Odin was taking another level in asshattery with every minute that passed. "Where will you begin your tale?"

"I would prefer to tell as little of it as possible," he replied, licking his lips. He made no move toward the table.

"We would have you tell it all, guardian," said the Norns, "that these mortals may fully understand your motives and the magnitude of your deeds."

A brief look of utter weariness crossed Loki's face. "Is this truly your command, great ladies?" Tony could hear the undertone, loud and clear: _What are you going to use me for this time?_

"It is necessary, child."

Loki glanced away, blinking rapidly. He scanned everyone in the room, and searched Thor's face for a long moment, before he nodded. He moved to the foot of the table, since Odin had already taken the head (of course), and sat gracefully. "Then I shall begin, I think, first with a geography lesson, followed by a biography, and then the history of the past few years."

"Sounds like you're stalling," said Natasha.

Loki just shook his head with a little smirk. "Background information you will require, if the rest of the tale is to make any sense."

One by one the others gathered and sat. Loki placed one palm on the table, and when he spread his fingers, a… hologram, maybe? leaped into being, filling the table and stretching all the way up to the ceiling. Bright glowing dots arranged in clusters and filaments. Leaning in close, Tony could see they were galaxies.

"A map of the universe," he said.

Loki nodded. "Your people have a rudimentary understanding of the cosmos, I believe, correct? You understood before meeting Thor that yours were not the only planets to exist, that there was always the possibility that life could exist on others?"

"We still have some questions, and until Thor we hadn't actually met any of that life, but yeah," said Bruce. "One of the big ones is that the universe is expanding faster than the quantity of observable matter can account for. We can sort of measure what we call 'dark matter' based on the gravitational effects it has on large astronomical bodies, but there's also a hypothetical 'dark energy' that, along with dark matter, makes up something like ninety-five percent of the universe."

Loki nodded. "That energy does exist, and while your current machinery cannot detect it, some living beings can. And we can manipulate it to interact with the world as we see fit."

"Magic," said Barton flatly. "You're talking about fu… freakin' magic."

"In essence, yes," said Loki. "What your people may not have theorized yet is that the energy itself has a _flow,_ albeit on a far larger scale than you can imagine."

He shifted his hand, and the image over the table changed. The shape of a glowing white tree emerged along one side of the map, flowing through the empty spaces between galaxies until they resembled leaves on the tree.

It was beautiful.

At another gesture from Loki, the parts of the map that weren't connected to the tree vanished. The remainder of the image zoomed in, and a handful of the galaxies that were still visible became encased in colored orbs, spaced at intervals throughout the tree's branches and trunk.

"Yggdrasil," said Loki. "Or at least, a very much simplified version of it. The World Tree, which interconnects all the Nine Realms. Her leaves are galaxies; the Nine Realms are her fruit. Life on these specific planets tends to be remarkably similar, all the way down to the length of years and days on our worlds. Consider, otherwise, the statistical probability of you and I being able to breathe the same atmosphere, or endure the same strength of gravity. Or even to eat the same foods without being poisoned; at best, it would make more sense if we were completely unable to digest anything not from our own respective realms. Asgard does not _feel _markedly different from your world, does it?"

Tony blinked, thinking about it. Sure, things _smelled _different, but… "Huh."

"The dark energy that flows through the World Tree connects these realms and no others, and makes them similar. The flow also makes it possible for machines to create pathways that follow the branches of the Tree, allowing for travel between realms." He paused, then added, "There are other ways to travel, but they require an innate talent, which no machinery can imitate."

"One of your names in our old myths was Sky-Treader," recalled Bruce. He ducked his head and ran a hand through his hair. "Or, you know, Sky Walker…"

"Skywalker?" Tony piped up. "Luke Skywalker?! Are you _kidding _me?"

All the humans at the table gave Tony a look to shut him up, but seriously. The whole _Luke, I am your father _thing had better not apply here, or… Tony had no idea what he'd actually do about it, but his brain might explode.

Loki lifted a hand and drew a little circle with his finger, and the space around the tree warped, pulling branches of the tree toward one another until two fruits were nearly touching. "The machinery which we use on Asgard is called the Bifrost. Thor came via Bifrost when he first traveled to your world; it partially utilizes dark energy and dark matter to craft a kind of tunnel through the void, and direct its path. Another way to represent it might be…" He tilted his head, and did something else with his fingers. The tree's shape snapped back to normal, and instead there was a smoothly curving arc drawn between the two orbs. "A Bifrost bridge is more accurately portrayed in the first image: a warping of space and all it contains. But from the perspective of the traveler, it appears like this. A vortex is created, rather like a whirlpool in water; the traveler is caught up in its flow and deposited at the far point. It is necessary to anchor each end of the vortex, or its motion cannot be controlled."

Tony was still wearing the suit, with his mask resting on the table; with what he hoped was a subtle shift, he aimed the eye cameras at Loki, knowing Jarvis—even the limited version he had in the suit without access to the main servers—would take the hint and record everything. Just knowing that some of this stuff was concretely possible was going to push forward the boundaries of science into whole new areas of study.

"Now," said Loki, glancing at the vessel where She stood off to one side, "it is posited by many that if there is one World Tree, there is no reason for there not to be another such tree, or more than one, elsewhere in the universe. However, until recently it was accepted that a Bifrost could not reach any location that lay outside the branches of its own tree. I… discovered differently. Unintentionally, and to my great regret."

"Loki…"

Thor was squeezing his shoulder and looking distressed, and even Odin was studying his younger son intently, but he just shook his head.

"Enough of cosmology for now, though we will return to it," he said, licking his lips. "Now for the biography." He leaned back in his seat, staring at nothing with a thoughtful frown on his face, before he appeared to have an idea. "Mortals… your kind. You live for, what? Approximately sixty years?"

"Average worldwide is in the eighties," corrected Bruce. "Good health and good genetics, it's possible to make it past one hundred, though that's pretty rare."

Loki nodded. "Whereas we live for thousands," and Tony choked. "Even so, your medicine seeks to find ways to prolong life, does it not? Ways to snatch the gravely ill or the severely injured away from the brink, buy them more time?"

Bruce nodded. Tony fought the urge to reach for his chest.

"I want you to imagine a being who embarked on a similar quest, a very long time ago, and succeeded in finding a way to deny death's embrace—succeeded too well. He literally, truly, cannot die… and it has driven him mad." He took a shaky breath. "I will not speak his name, though perhaps Thor or Odin might."

"Thanos," said Odin immediately. "The Mad Titan."

"I thought he was merely a legend," frowned Thor.

"No." Odin studied Loki's face, his own expression remote. "No, he is real, or was."

"Is," said Loki, with a bit of edge in his voice. "I had the misfortune of meeting him."

Odin narrowed his eye intently at Loki, while Thor only looked worried. "Why did you not tell us this, brother?"

Loki bared his teeth for the briefest of moments, clearly struggling for calm. "I would not tell you of that time even now, were it not for the insistence of the Norns themselves."

There weren't enough talk-show hosts in the room to deal with all their family baggage; Tony raised a hand before they could all start up even more drama. "Excuse me? Refresher course on this Thanos guy, for the rest of us?" And wait a second… did Loki actually flash him a look of _gratitude_ for pulling them all back on-topic?

"The Titan was once a scholar among his people," said Loki, "and he found a way to prolong his life indefinitely. Whatever secrets he discovered have been lost to time now; it is only known that, as the decades passed and friends and family died, he realized too late that his discovery was a curse and not a gift. What he had done to himself could not be undone."

Tony glanced around at Cap, who looked a little too sober, and Bruce who was hiding a shudder.

"He began attempting more and more outlandish ways to end his life," Loki continued, "all of them failing. But facing mortal peril is still… scarring. Traumatic on an instinctual level, even if one's body is immune to the usual outcome. His mind began to fray, and surviving accounts from the time indicate that he eviscerated his own mother, on her deathbed, for daring to bring him into a world he would not be permitted to leave. As the eons passed—and I use the term advisedly—all his people aged and died without him, leaving him the sole survivor of an otherwise extinct species. He grew increasingly desperate to join them, and increasingly mad with each failed attempt. Eventually, his sanity departed him completely. And now, instead of seeing death as a biological process, which he cannot complete, the Titan believes with a _fanatic_ passion that death is a sentient being—and he, craving death, believes himself in love with this being. He sees her as a coquette, teasing him with the deaths of living beings all around him while not bestowing her attentions on him. The Titan now attempts to win Death's favor, by attracting her notice and sending her _gifts_."

"Gifts?" asked Natasha, eyebrow raised.

"Mass slaughter, in her name," he answered quietly. "The deaths of millions of beings at a time, their souls sent across the threshold between this life and the next as sacrifices to her glory… or perhaps additions to her army, or messengers from her lover, or even jewels in her crown." Loki shook his head. "That part is a bit unclear. But the rest is irrefutable."

"Thanos was banished from the Nine, long ago," said Odin. "Histories claim he was impossible to defeat, not only because he was impossible to kill but because he had no care for how many of his soldiers were slain in battle." He glanced at Loki once. "Histories also claim that he once threw himself into the heart of a star; I had believed this to be exaggeration, or perhaps a demonstration of his might. I had not considered the possibility that it was an attempt at suicide."

"And that _failed_?" asked Clint, his eyebrows climbing.

"Yes," said She, and everyone turned to look at Her. "It took the combined strength of the most powerful seidmadr and seidkona among all the realms to subdue him long enough to remove him physically from the Nine Realms and bar him from returning."

"Seid… what?" asked Cap.

"Magic users," said Loki. "Like myself."

She nodded. "Hundreds of them, from every species in the Nine Realms, among both the living and the dead. The sheer magnitude of the effort required destroyed more than three-quarters of them. Those seidmadr who survived were permanently damaged, their ability to use magic essentially burned out of them. Such an injury is excruciating to endure. Most died by their own hands rather than continue to suffer."

And it was Loki's turn to shudder in his seat… along with Odin, Tony noticed, and even Thor.

Well. Shit.

"The living and the dead?" asked Barton. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"Two of the Nine Realms are home to the souls of the dead," said Thor matter-of-factly. "The other seven are inhabited by the living."

Okay, wait. What?

Tony and Clint weren't the only ones sputtering. "You're talking about an afterlife," said Steve. "We have dozens of religions on Earth that have their own beliefs about what happens to us after we die. And now you're trying to claim that… that what?"

"We claim nothing, Captain," said Thor.

"Mortals generally believe that while life ends, the immortal soul continues on," said the Norns. "This belief is correct."

Loki tipped his head back and forth. "To your people, the afterlife, as you call it, is purely hypothetical; whether it even exists is a matter of faith," he said. "To us, the afterlife is a location. Somewhat... layered over the realms of the living. Occupying the same space at the same time. This location is difficult to access by the living, and one breaks several rules by doing so, but not impossible."

"Let's set that aside for a minute." Natasha leaned forward in her seat, arms folded on the table. "You said you left the Nine Realms, and met this Thanos. You were working for him?"

Loki started to answer, but the vessel cut him off. "That part of the tale will be revealed in its proper time," She said. "The guardian must tell his tale from its beginning."

Loki slid his hands off the table and into his lap, the image of the World Tree flickering out. He glanced at Her, the Norns' vessel or whatever. "Is the rest truly necessary?" he asked.

"We are willing to tell the story on your behalf," She said, her glass body chiming softly as she stepped forward.

"No." He looked away. "No, I will do it. I merely fail to see the purpose in doing so." He met Her gaze again, tipping his head to take in the rest of them. "Do you expect I will somehow win their sympathies for my actions?"

"We think you may be surprised," said She.

"With respect," he retorted, "I think you may be as well."

"We are not often wrong, child," said the Norns; "after all, we know the essential nature of every soul ever to inhabit Yggdrasil."

Loki sat back in his seat, propped his elbows on the arms of the chair, and clasped his hands, pressing his fingers hard against his forehead. He didn't move, and he didn't talk. Apparently long awkward silences were a thing they did in this family, so Tony decided it was his turn to speak up.

"Why send a glowing glass statue to come talk to us instead of just coming in person?" he asked. Loki actually scoffed behind his hands.

"Do you not recall the immensity of the World Tree, the sheer scale of its branches? Can you not imagine the magnitude of the energies that comprise the Tree's structure?" He tipped his head just enough to look at Tony with one eye. "The Three Sisters _nurture _the World Tree. They _feed and water it._ It is a flow of immense energy, and they _direct_ that flow. They know the precise location of every particle of its composition. They are beings of such power that your minds could not even look upon them without shattering. Were they to come here in person, the touch of a single footprint would be sufficient to unmake this realm _into its constituent atoms_. I said before that the Nine Realms are the fruits of Yggdrasil, Stark—the Three Sisters are its _gardeners_. They could pluck Asgard from existence as easily as you might pick an apple from the palace orchards, just outside."

Oh.

"…And you don't want to do what they ask, because…?"

Loki hid his eye away again, and said tiredly, "Do you really think that having their attention, much less their favor, is truly a good thing? Your mortal philosophers debate the nature of and struggle between the concept of fate and free will, but to you that is all they are, merely concepts. To us… well." He waved one hand at the vessel and huffed a bitter laugh, without looking up. "Here they are."

"Are you trying to say there's no such thing as free will?" asked Bruce.

"No. But you only have freedom for as long as you are insignificant enough to escape their notice." Tony grimaced, remembering that She had said the Avengers _amused _Her. From pressing his fingers to his forehead, Loki shifted, pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes as he added, "Do you really think I want to be their _favorite_, when it really only means I am to be their plaything from now until they tire of me?"

Thor turned, and it was kinda sweet in a hopeless sort of way to watch him try to put himself physically between Loki and Her. You know, as if it would help at all.

"Maybe you shouldn't have called attention to yourself," snarked Barton, and Loki just dropped his hands in his lap to look at him tiredly.

"You seem to believe that you haven't," was all he said.

* * *

><p><strong>A note that I left out of the previous chapter: There is a character in the Norse alphabet that does not appear in the Latin alphabet we use, "thorn" that sounds like either the voiceless "th" of "thing" or the voiced "th" of "this". For the voiced version I've substituted "dh", giving us the names "Urdhr" and "Verdhandi" where they're usually spelled "Urdr" and "Verdandi". However, just to be contrary I guess, I'm spelling the word for magic as "seidr" rather than "seidhr" as I suppose I ought to. Sorry for the inconsistency.<strong>


	4. Chapter 4

"Your grievance will be addressed in due time, archer," said the big glass statue, as Barton scowled. "Guardian: begin."

Loki nodded, and Thor's hand came up to squeeze the back of his neck. "The beginning… I was raised the second prince of Asgard, not destined to inherit the throne. The man who claimed to be my father used to tell us that we were both born to be kings. I could never understand why he would try to instill resentment and competition in us, when all knew that the honor would one day be given to Thor. I didn't realize until very recently that the words were his cryptic way of saying that I was not really his son, and never had been."

"That is not true," said Odin, but Loki cut him off with a sneer.

"I am only your son when it is convenient to you. The last time we spoke you reminded me that my true birthright was to _die in infancy_. You told me that I ought to be grateful you had _let me live_ long enough to despise you. It was you who took your name from me; yet now, when the sisters of Yggdrasil come seeking me, _now _you wish to claim me once more? I suppose it has occurred to you that perhaps you can get some use out of me after all. How terribly fortuitous for you, _All-Father_." He sat back with a look of disgust on his face. "You have not yet paused to consider, _Odin,_ that perhaps I have no desire to claim _you_."

Tony raised an eyebrow. Sure, he was taking all this with a grain of salt, but if any of it was true, well, it sounded like maybe Odin and Howard could have gone bowling together sometime.

"You did not always think this way," said Thor, and Tony grimaced at the pain in his voice. Talk about being caught in the middle.

"No," agreed Loki. "No, I was blinded to the truth for most of my life. I spent centuries believing that I might somehow earn the favor that Odin gave so freely to you, Asgard's golden son. I did not expect to win the throne, but a little respect would not have gone amiss."

Barton rolled his eyes.

"The trouble was," Loki continued, "Odin's favored son _received_ favor he had not necessarily _earned_. He grew to believe himself infallible, failed to consider the consequences of his actions, or even that there were any consequences. He lived at the center of his world, on a blissful island crafted of his own arrogance and sustained by the constant praises of the sycophants he called friends."

Thor cleared his throat and scowled, but didn't say anything to refute Loki's claims. Interesting.

"Uh, are you sure we're talking about the same guy, here?" asked Bruce. Barton snickered, but Thor… actually turned a little red. Huh.

"You met me after the events Loki speaks of," he said, "but his description is accurate."

"I perhaps contributed to the problem," Loki said with a shrug, "given that I spent far too much time cleaning up your messes for you. You never learned how to deal with the aftermath of your recklessness."

"Sounds like good gossip," Tony piped up. "Got any examples?"

Loki sighed. "The dragon."

Thor groaned. "Not this again."

"Yes, again," bickered Loki, "you're the one who refuses to believe a word I tell you about the entire fiasco."

"Because you're exaggerating—"

"I do no such—"

"Okay, okay," Steve interjected. "Just… tell the story. Or else skip it, because I don't see how this would tie in with what the, uh, Norns want you to tell us."

"I want the gossip," said Tony.

"I, too, wish to hear this tale," put in Odin, which actually seemed to surprise Loki a little.

"When Thor and his friends were younger," ("_Our_ friends," muttered Thor), "they enjoyed hunting dangerous beasts and searching for legendary treasures. Questing for glory, they called it. And I accompanied them; my brother and I were inseparable at the time, but I also felt compelled to make sure the idiots didn't get themselves killed through sheer stupidity. But there was one quest they wanted to embark on, one legend that they discovered _only ancestors know where,_" and here, he threw a blistering glare at Thor, "from which I attempted to dissuade them. A dragon, according to the tale, which had amassed a fortune by plundering the bodies of its victims." He broke off for a second, glanced sideways at his brother. "You _do _know they get that pile of gold into their caves by _eating_ the people and _defecating_ whatever they cannot entirely digest, right?"

"Loki!" Thor buried is face in his hands, but Tony could see he was hiding an embarrassed grin. Tony couldn't help it, he snickered. And so did Barton, clearly against his better judgment.

"No matter," said Loki cheerfully, "all that was important to Thor and his hangers-on was that there was a fearsome beast to be slain and fantastic wealth to be won. It was utterly inconsequential that dragons who are successful enough to acquire a hoard are rare, intelligent, and deadly. Of no importance whatsoever the location of this dragon's cave, nor its age, nor even the fact that it had a _name_."

Odin folded his arms and leveled a dangerous stare at the two men seated at the foot of the table, while Thor rubbed the back of his neck and turned a little pink.

"I gather that's a big deal?" asked Bruce.

"Dragons tend to earn a name for themselves from the people who have the misfortune of living nearby, or from the stories told by the few who survive their attacks. Named dragons are distinguished by being exceptionally dangerous and by having established a territory from which they cannot be expelled. They become, in essence, landmarks to be avoided at all cost."

Odin was looking at Thor with his eye narrowed and his lips pressed together. "And what was the name of this dragon?" he asked.

"Skandranon the Black," said Loki mildly, and Odin slammed both hands on the table as he stood.

"You did what!"

"Didn't tell your dad where you were going, did ya?" said Tony.

"You were foolish enough to challenge _that _dragon with only the six of you? What madness afflicted you that you would think such a quest to be a good idea?!"

"Everything worked out in the end—"

"Were you _cursed_ with stupidity, or had you taken too many blows to the head during training and addled your wits?!" Odin threw one last glare at his son before sitting back down and turning to Loki. "How long ago was this?" he demanded.

"Oh, two hundred fifty, perhaps three hundred years ago," said Loki helpfully.

"Foolish boy!" said Odin. "And I am as great a fool, because I was optimistic enough to believe you had only become so arrogant and bloodthirsty in the years leading up to your coronation."

"I tried to tell you," shrugged Loki, but Odin squinted at him in _supreme_ skepticism.

"Do not pretend you are innocent in this," he said.

"Oh, far from it," said Loki, "I was there, after all. How could I tell you what an idiot your precious boy was being, without implicating myself?" He leaned forward. "But the arrogance and blood thirst, as you put it, were entirely on his shoulders, not mine. And I _did _try to tell you about those. Repeatedly. I attempted to _show _you, repeatedly. You found excuses for his behavior, every time."

"Okay, but dragon," said Tony. Odin _clearly _wanted to keep the discussion going, but he took one look at the Norn statue and leaned back, scowling. "Setting the family drama aside, why was this example so important—because the dragon was a badass? I got the impression that taking on badass manly challenges was kind of their hobby."

Loki took a breath to settle himself. "This particular tale," he said, "is representative of everything that was wrong with Thor's character for a very long time—although I will acknowledge that he has changed—and representative also of our interactions as brothers. You see, this dragon ought quite easily to have slaughtered the five of them."

"You always say that—"

"Because it is _true_," insisted Loki, "and if you still call yourself my brother you will _shut up and listen _for once! Skandranon the Black was legendary for a _reason,_ Thor, and a handful of louts with swords and blunt instruments would merely have made a pleasant _snack_ for him… except that the spells I cast ensured that he could not _see _you to devour you whole."

He raised his eyebrows at Thor, waiting for a response, but Thor only gaped at him.

"You and the rest of the idiots mocked me for staying to the rear and not engaging with a dragon as old as Odin himself, a dragon who I'm quite sure had faced more than one band of would-be heroes and _made a meal out of them_. As it happens, I did a little reading before we ventured forth, and the records indicate that more than one _battalion _was destroyed in combat with the beast."

Thor choked. Odin glared. Both of them were turning redder and redder for entirely different reasons, and it was all Tony could do not to let them distract him from Loki's story.

"So, yes, despite your mockery, I stayed to the rear. I stayed to the rear where I could keep an eye on the entire battle and call out a warning when, say, Hogun was about to be decapitated by the beast. I stayed to the rear where I was able to see Skandranon's mighty wings sweeping down to flatten you all, and shred them with throwing knives from a _safe distance_ like a sensible person. But did you realize this?" Loki crossed his arms and glared, the rest of them forgotten. "No. Because you never even noticed, nor bothered to ask. Not one of you asked, Thor, you all just congratulated yourselves on a magnificent kill and turned to laugh at and mock Loki the sneak, Loki the coward, Loki who had better not expect to get any of the treasure since he hadn't done a thing in the fight!"

Tony snuck a quick glance around, to see everyone else as caught up in the story as he'd been. Barton, naturally, looked highly doubtful of Loki's version of events, but the Norn statue was standing to one side with a smile on Her face.

"As punishment," Loki went on, "the lot of you decided that since you were all tired from your exertions and I hadn't done anything, I should be given first watch. Which was actually fine with me, because the magic pouring off that hoard was enough to keep me awake all night with a blinding headache. It was _cursed_, you moron. Skandranon was old enough to have seidr of his own, _and he used it_. The hoard itself would have brought ill luck and death upon any who touched it, and underneath that blanket spell there were nearly a score of individual artifacts that each had curses of their own. A blade that would turn against its wielder, a handful of other weapons that would bring misfortune to whomever bore them. A pair of gloves that would turn the wearer to stone. A coat of mail that would burn into the flesh of the first person to try it on. A poisoned drinking horn." He smiled sarcastically at his brother. "This would be the part where you tell me I am exaggerating."

"You've never gone into such detail before—"

"Because you never let me."

"It is true," put in Odin unexpectedly. "Skandranon the Black was a threat even in my youth, when tales of his viciousness and of the curses laid upon his hoard were more widespread. I remember the drinking horn especially. There was one thief who managed to steal it from the dragon as he slept, and brought it to a tavern to boast. They filled it with the finest mead and passed it around in celebration, and mere hours later every single person who had drunk of it died in agony, contorting their bodies and foaming at the mouth like diseased wolves. The servants in the tavern were not permitted to drink, and they alone lived to witness the horror, and spread the tale." He leaned back in his seat, studying Loki as if he'd never seen him before. "A few days later the dragon crept from his lair, to recover the horn and feast upon the corpses."

"Eugh," said Tony. Everyone around the table shuddered.

"I spent the entirety of my watch and Volstagg's disrupting and unraveling curses, where I could," said Loki. "There were at least five that I could only mitigate, rather than dispelling them completely. I chose to take those onto myself, rather than watch them be inflicted upon my brother and our closest friends. And oh, how grateful you all were… Do you recall when Hogun woke you all, by dragging me out into the circle by the fire and accusing me of trying to pilfer the finest pieces for myself?"

"I remember thinking it odd that you…" Thor turned pale as his eyes grew wide in realization. "You were wearing a coat of mail, and I thought it strange because you had not taken off your other armor to put it on. You… tell me that you were not—"

"He was," said the Norns. "We watched, and were pleased with his bravery. Those curses that Loki could not break completely, he took upon himself, and suffered their diminished effects."

Thor put one hand over his mouth and dragged down. "You were sick, after we returned," he said. From his voice, it sounded like the big guy as about to be a little sick himself.

"I was," said Loki, "ill for a little over a month as the curses worked their way through my flesh, until they either ran their course or I was able to defeat them."

"The pendant weakened him until he could barely stand," said the Norns. "The gloves numbed his hands and arms. The coat of mail burned him, even through his clothing. Your beloved brother was in excruciating pain for the rest of your journey and for weeks afterward, and you, son of Odin, never even noticed."

Loki shook his head and smiled sadly. "And Sif told everyone who would listen that I was better suited to be a court maiden than she was, because I was so delicate and afraid to fight. Fandral thought it a fine jest." Loki said it quietly, with no venom in his voice, but Tony could hear the pain he was trying to mask. Old hurts were the worst. "Volstagg was furious that I had done something to the _magnificent_ drinking horn he'd been hoping to have for himself, so that whatever was poured into it would be turned to foul-smelling ink. Wasteful and petty, he called it. Hogun glared at me and refused to leave any of his things unattended or out of arm's reach whenever I came into the room, for _years _afterward."

Thor looked at him, stricken. He was silent for a long moment before asking, his voice breaking, "Why did you not tell us any of this?"

"You never asked," said Loki simply. "None of you asked what I was doing, or why. You never have, not in all my lifetime, Thor. Instead, one or another of you would leap to accuse me of whatever underhanded scheme _you_ might come up with, the others would agree that of course, Loki was up to his usual mischief, and that would be the end of all discussion on the matter. Not once did any of you even seek to confirm your accusations. And why would you? All know that Loki is an unrepentant liar."

Thor took a shaky breath, but Odin spoke up before he could say anything himself. "Loki. Do you have proof of this tale?"

Loki laughed bitterly. "Forgive me, All-Father, I am merely taking stock of the number of times you have asked Thor for any proof of _his_ outlandish boasts. And yet your skepticism is still an improvement over your usual approach. But yes," he smirked. "Assuming my chambers remain untouched, and my personal belongings were not burned, the drinking horn is mounted in my study, on the left-hand wall above my desk. You may examine it, if you feel you must, and see if it resembles the one described in the old tales."

Odin got up and moved to the door, where Tony could hear him speaking to someone. Loki turned to the rest of them, taking in their expressions with a sardonic smile. "And there is a perfect example of the nature of our relationship, for centuries: Thor would get an idea into his head that was likely to get him and everyone around him killed, I would prevent a disaster or clean up after one, and Thor would receive credit for his daring heroics, never the wiser for his success, never considering that there had ever been a chance things might not have gone perfectly his way. As I said before, I suppose I must bear some of the blame for the arrogance he developed, since I could never bear to _allow_ him to face those consequences, but that is beside the point. The point is that Asgard ended up, after centuries of this nonsense going unchecked by any sort of discipline, with a prince who was nearly of age to inherit the throne, and who could not possibly have been less suited for the role."

* * *

><p><strong>Credit where it is due: most of the idea for the dragon hunt gone wrong was inspired by a much smaller scene in chapter one of <strong>_**Loki's Journey**_** by Scfilover, found here on FFnet. The name "Skandranon the Black" was lifted, I had originally thought, from the Dragonlance series of novels, but in fact when I went to double check, "Skandranon" turned out to be the name of the titular character from Mercedes Lackey's novel **_**The Black Gryphon**_**. Who knew? I thought about changing it but then figured, eh, Easter egg.**

**I feel I ought to apologize for this chapter, or else title it "In which the plot runs away from the author." We get back on track in the next one, though.**


	5. Chapter 5

They were all quiet for a second, before Natasha spoke up. "You said your personal belongings might have been burned. Is that something they do to criminals here?"

"No," replied Loki. "That is what they do for people who have died. Which I was assumed to have done, about a year prior to my arrival on Midgard."

"Okay, wait, _dead_?"

Clint leaned toward Natasha. "Shame that didn't take."

Loki sighed. "We'll get there, Agent Barton. I'm sure the tale will amuse you." He looked over at the Norns' vessel again, with what Tony thought was pretty much the ultimate _do-I-have-to _face; when She said nothing, he sighed again and stood.

"Where the hell you think you're going?" asked Barton.

"I require something to drink, if I must tell the rest of this."

"Sounds like an _excellent _plan to me," said Tony, and he got up and clanked his way over to the sideboard too. "Cap? Brucie? I bet they got stuff here that would even mellow out the two of you. Anyone?" He looked over the pitchers and bottles for a second before picking one and holding it up to his nose. "Always wondered what the hell mead was, anyway."

"Wine is made from grapes," said Loki, "and mead is made from honey. Other than that they are identical."

"Wait. That's _it?_"

"Sorry to disappoint," he smirked, and gave a little salute with his cup, some kind of animal horn that had been filed and capped to give it a flat bottom, with silver worked into its rim.

"Well, what are you having?" asked Tony, and Loki just smirked again.

"Something that would kill you, I'm afraid. Ordinarily one drinks this particular brew diluted and heavily sweetened, but…" He tossed back the contents of his cup and downed it in two gulps, then gave the kind of full-body shudder Tony only associated with, like, really nasty cough medicine. "If the Norns give me no choice but to tell a room full of mortals of the worst, most humiliating moments of my life, then I will at least choose not to be sober for it."

"Did that taste as horrible as you made it look?" asked Tony.

"Worse." Loki reached over to another pitcher and refilled his cup with something golden and slightly syrupy, then poured a second cup for Tony. "If you want to be able to remember any of this tale, I'd suggest you keep to the mead."

So. Drinks and snacks all around, everybody back at the table, and by the time Tony sat back down Odin was examining a big, fancy version of Loki's horn cup. Like, instead of being capped and turned into a cup, it was a full-size animal horn, at least a foot and a half long, and the sharp point of the horn was tipped in gold. In addition to that and the rim edging, the entire horn was carved with scenes and figures and curly stuff that Pepper with her appreciation for art would probably recognize, and half of those carvings were filled in or bordered with gold, too. As they watched, Odin poured his own cup of mead into the horn, carefully, then wrinkled his nose before he schooled his expression. From the horn, he poured back into the cup not mead but a slightly foamy, completely black sludge, which absolutely _stank. _Like, enough to make Tony's eyes water. Talk about nasty liquor.

Yeah, nobody would be drinking out of that one, that was for sure.

Odin tried to catch Loki's eye, his gaze somber, and Thor kept glancing back and forth between the horn and Loki, but Loki himself ignored them both as he sat back down.

"To recapitulate the tale," he said, "we have Thor, arrogant, hot-tempered, and oblivious; we have Odin, who for whatever reason overlooked Thor's many faults while preparing to give him the throne of Asgard; and we have myself, whom Odin overlooked entirely, for reasons which will become clear." Barton scoffed. Loki ignored that, too. "By the time the events took place which I am about to describe, I had become resentful. Not envious, despite what Sif and others would have us all believe, but deeply frustrated, and fearful for Asgard's future. And for Thor, I suppose. Were he to take the throne at that time, he not only would have led the kingdom to ruin, he likely would have prompted either a war or multiple assassination attempts, and eventually one of those attempts would have succeeded."

"Not you?" asked Widow, her eyebrow raised.

Loki gave her question some serious thought. "Not at that time," he said finally. "I loved my brother then, and still do, even if I occasionally hated him as well. If things had continued on that same path, who can say? I like to believe it would never have come to that, but I am not one of the Three Sisters."

He drew his fingers across his lower lip, looking off into space. "In retrospect, I believe that I made all of the worst possible choices, motivated by the best of all possible intentions. And each decision made, each poor choice, narrowed my options further, while I struggled to keep up with events that, like frightened crows, took wing and quickly flew beyond all hope of control, in every direction." He shut his eyes once, opened them again as he took a swallow of his drink.

"Is this regret, Loki?" asked Odin. Again with that oddly warm tone that Tony didn't expect, given what an ass the guy had been up to that point.

The younger man glared at the elder. "The only way I will be able to stomach the telling of this story is if I pretend you are not in the room, All-Father," he said. "I would take it as a kindness if you were to do what you could to aid in that pretense."

"It is not an unreasonable question, brother," said Thor carefully, and Loki sighed.

"I have had ample time to reflect, since everything happened," he said. He glanced around the room, and once more toward the Norns, before he began.

"These events took place perhaps… three or four years ago, now. In the months leading up to Thor's proposed coronation, Thor remained impetuous, quick to anger, shortsighted, and terribly easy to manipulate, but it seemed that no one could see it but me. Or, if any could see it, I must assume that they feared Thor's wrath to the point that they would not speak out. My own attempts to speak with the All-Father were met with condescension or contempt. My supposed envy was unbecoming, you see. The old man had ruled for millennia and was eager to hand the burden off to someone else, no matter how unready his replacement might have been.

"I grew more uneasy with the state of affairs, until I was nearly frantic. And yes," he added tiredly, "increasingly resentful of the way my opinions were passed over. If Odin was so eager to step down from the throne, might he at least consider handing rule to someone who was capable of thinking before he acted?"

"So you did want the throne," put in Natasha.

"Temporarily, or at least that is what I told myself at the time," said Loki. "I did not want the burden of the throne; I preferred the freedom to study and travel the realms, in ways which no king is ever permitted to do outside of warfare. No, what I wanted more was the public acknowledgement that I had anything of value to contribute to this kingdom. Had I not also been trained to rule? Might not my skills be of use as a diplomat, an envoy, or as counsel to the throne? But there was no such acknowledgement, and that angered me. Thor might be the one chosen to wield Gungnir, but I was not even recognized as having the potential to serve as his advisor. Thor received accolades, and I received nothing comparable. Thor was named heir, and I was not even named heir-presumptive." He paused to rub at his forehead. "So yes, I was angry. And yet I loved my brother and feared for him, and for Asgard. That anger and that worry, as I said, combined until I was nearly quivering with anxiety. Finally, it seemed to me that the only way to make the All-Father see that my brother was _simply not ready _was to stage a demonstration."

Loki licked his lips nervously, looking at the table rather than anyone else in the room. "I needed an audience to witness Thor's poor behavior for themselves, and I needed to make certain that the coronation itself did not take place. I needed a diversion that would force a reaction from my brother, but ultimately be something that led nowhere, something he would not be able to escalate and make worse." He huffed a laugh to himself, then, and took another swallow from his cup. "I ought to have remembered, after so many centuries, that my brother can _always _make things worse."

Thor, for his part, looked torn between amusement at that last comment, sorrow at the memories, and anger at whatever it was Loki had done.

Odin was not so conflicted. "Two guards died as a result of your actions, Loki."

Loki bared his teeth in response. "It was the _vault_, they weren't supposed to be inside it in the first place! Those doors are _never_ opened, that was rather the _point_. Otherwise it wouldn't _be_ a vault; it would be a _museum_. And I should expect that on the day of Thor's _coronation, _like every other day when the palace is open to the public, the doors would have _remained_ shut for security purposes. The Frost Giants would have gotten _into _the vault and been unable to _leave _it, and that was assuming the Destroyer by some miracle was unable to fulfill its purpose and protect the artifacts. No one was supposed to die at all!"

"No one except the Frost Giants you deceived!"

"Oh, please," sneered Loki, "you'd spent our entire lives letting us think of them as little more than beasts, entertaining us with tales of how easy they were to conquer because of their greed. You never stopped anyone from regaling us with the knowledge of how disgusting and subhuman they were, barely worthy to be counted among the races of the Nine Realms. The loss of a lowly Frost Giant was, based on all we had been taught, no great loss at all."

"Oh, so you guys are racists," said Tony without thinking. Bruce gave him a look that clearly said he thought Tony was nuts, and Natasha wasn't far behind him. Okay, probably not the most diplomatic thing to say, just off the cuff like that.

"What does this term mean?" asked Thor.

Bruce coughed uncomfortably, when no one else answered. "Uh, what we call racism is the concept that one group of people is inherently superior to another, based on their ancestry; or more to the point, that the other group of people is inherently inferior. Racist thinking is used to justify all kinds of unfair behaviors, anywhere from making that group of people the punchline to all your jokes, to excusing rape or murder because it doesn't really count if you do it to them. Assuming that they are untrustworthy or prone to violence, being reluctant to hire them for work, beliefs about the terrible ways they treat their spouses or children. Blaming that group of people when bad things happen to the community as a whole. Things like that."

He grimaced, his hands fidgeting on the table. "I remember when I was a kid, there was this one boy in my neighborhood whose mom let him have both black and white kids as friends, but she would always make the black kids wash their feet before they were allowed into the house. And she never shared food with them. The white kids could sit and have a snack on the porch together after school, but the black kids had to bring their own or they couldn't have any. And my friend's mom, you know, she thought that was perfectly okay, just based on a pigment difference and a little bit of a cultural difference."

"From what you're saying," Steve picked up the thread, "you were taught that your people are superior and these… what did you call them, Frost Giants?... that these Frost Giants are inferior, like Bruce said. You would just take it as a given that they're not as smart, not as brave, maybe; not as clean, even. You believe that they don't deserve to live just as much as anybody else. That killing them doesn't count. Like they don't have families of their own, people who care about them, people who would worry if they went missing or be heartbroken if they died."

Loki and Thor were both silent for a long moment. Finally, Loki said quietly, "Yes. That is what we were taught. I have since learned otherwise, but those were our initial beliefs, both Thor's and mine."

"I never _once_ instructed you in these ideas," began Odin, but Bruce actually cut him off.

"Racism is complicated," he said. "And the messages don't have to be overt to be absorbed; it's as much how you behave as it is what you say, that a kid will pick up on and internalize." He shrugged. "We only have the one species on Earth, and we still struggle with racism toward one another, in nearly every culture. It sounds like the Frost Giants are an entirely different species, from a different world, am I correct?"

"A conquered species," confirmed Loki, "defeated in a war fought while I was an infant." He had a strange look on his face, sort of _I-know-something-you-don't-know, _that had Tony thinking the racism thing was going to come back and bite them on the ass later.

"Loki's crimes against the Jotnar are grave," said the Norns, and Loki looked down at the table, hunched in on himself like a little kid. "However, his beliefs are the result of a far greater crime, committed by his father. The means he chose to prevent Thor's coronation was only possible because of what Odin had done, centuries before."

"The Jotnar had invaded Midgard," said Odin, stern but perplexed. "They needed to be stopped, and the protection of the Nine Realms is the sacred responsibility of the king of Asgard."

"That much is correct, Bor's son," said the Norns. "But what you took from their defeated king was not a weapon, but the heart of their Realm."

Odin's eye grew wide, and his nostrils flared. Out of the corner of his eye, Tony saw Loki bring a hand to his mouth, and swallow heavily.

"You did not merely confine the warriors of Jotunheim to their world," the Norns continued, "you condemned their entire species to a slow death. Their world dies, and all life there dies with it. Their culture has declined as a consequence of the fading of their realm. The stories that depict them as grasping, violent savages are all the more believable, now that they are starving and forced to claw for every scrap of sustenance. They have not the energy to expend on preserving their culture, else your sons would have known of their music, their architecture, the intricacies of their customs. The quality of their jewelry, the taste of their delicacies. Perhaps if the Jotnar were merely defeated in a long-ago war, and not continuing to suffer even today, your sons would have had an easier time accepting them as equals alongside the Vanir and Ljosalfar."

"I…" Tony thought the guy was going to keel over, and from the looks on Thor and Loki's faces, they had never seen Odin so shaken. "I humble myself before you, illustrious ladies. I did not know."

"Because you did not ask," said She, stepping away from her spot off to one side of the long table. "You sought no lore, consulted no records of the Casket and its properties. You were not so reckless as Thor, nor so bloodthirsty, but you still did not seek to understand the consequences of your actions. Neither did you seek to take responsibility for the people who had come under your rule, once Laufey had fallen. The Jotnar ought to have become your subjects. Instead you turned your back on the people you conquered and forgot about them." The Norns' vessel stood over Odin now, looking down Her nose (way, way down) at him. "You told your sons as children that Asgard was sworn to protect the Nine Realms, and yet you also told them that after the war against Jotunheim, Asgard withdrew itself from the affairs of men. How can you protect those with whom you never speak? How can you know of their troubles if you never bestir yourself from the confines of your fortress walls?"

She turned away, the glass of her body ringing and chiming as she moved down the table. "One realm dying, thanks to your neglect. Another almost entirely ignorant of its place among the Nine, and of its importance to the survival of Yggdrasil. The people of Midgard are woefully unprepared, looked down upon as a backward and ignorant species almost as much as the Jotnar themselves are." She turned just enough to look over Her shoulder at Odin, and added scornfully, "And you fear the prophecies spoken about _Loki_. Yggdrasil is in far greater danger as a result of your actions than it has ever been from his."

* * *

><p><strong>I swear, I have no idea how to do plot. And dialogue runs away with me almost every damn time. None of this was in my original story idea. Sigh.<strong>

**(Look at my face, you can see how broken up I am about it.)**


	6. Chapter 6

Loki began to laugh, with a bit of hysteria to the sound. "Prophecies? There are _prophecies_, now?" His laughter grew higher, wild. "Oh—oh, how delicious. Is that why you took me, Odin? Was that your secret purpose? What horrible… manner of _thing _am I destined to become?"

"Loki. Loki, stop this. Brother…" Thor wrapped an arm around Loki's shoulders and squeezed, but Loki only passed one hand across his eyes, still shaking. He continued to laugh (or maybe it wasn't laughter, thought Tony), silently now, as Odin spoke.

"We do not know that the verses are even true," he said, but Loki only leapt to his feet and leaned out over the table, all traces of humor gone instantly.

"No, you would have had _contingency plans_ in place if you were certain, wouldn't you?" he snarled. "Or perhaps that is why you stole me in the first place—an attempt to stop any of them from coming to pass!"

"Loki—" "That is not—"

"Do not _lie_ to me—"

"_Enough._" The big glass statue spoke a single word, and it wasn't any louder than any other time She had said anything, but the word seemed to reverberate around the entire room and out into the surrounding _countryside_. Tony's eyes were watering and it felt like he had a sinus headache from a sudden change in air pressure. Looking down the table, Steve was shaking his head like he'd just been clobbered a good one, and Bruce was exhaling, a long, slow, calming breath as his hands clenched together on the table. Barton was pressing the heel of his hand to one eye socket, blinking rapidly, but Natasha had her stoic face on, which Tony was finally beginning to learn how to read after a year of working with her.

Thor and Odin both sat back in their seats, glancing between Loki and Her, but Loki didn't move. He still leaned out over the table, his teeth bared, _quivering _with hate or rage or pain or who the hell knew what, and even in his prison-wear pajamas he was still making Tony think of a panther, ready to leap the distance and tear out somebody's throat.

"We are here to lend authority to the guardian's words, as he reveals for the first time his true efforts to protect the Nine Realms," said the vessel. "We regret revealing that any such prophecies ever existed. They are irrelevant in any case."

"So you will hide the truth from me as well," said Loki, his voice a ragged rasp; despite how insane he _sounded_, he straightened to gaze at her evenly with all the dignity of a pissed-off royal. "Illustrious ladies."

She paused, and Tony started to wonder if maybe the Norns were trying to decide whether or not to do some of that obliterating that Loki had claimed they were capable of.

"No," She said finally. "We will not hide what you wish to know. Though we could, if we so chose, and your insolence would not move us."

Loki sat slowly, his lips thinned. The vessel nodded at Odin.

"While you were yet a child," he said, "a woman came to my court, claiming to be a volva, declaring that she had had a vision of Asgard's future. She presented to us a roll of linen, brittle with age, embroidered with words and images that suggested a prince of Asgard, 'with two fathers', would bring Ragnarök."

"The downfall of the realms," put in Bruce, looking around at all the humans in the room. "Basically Armageddon, but with more planets involved."

"The wording was unclear," continued Odin, "as to whether this person would cause the final war deliberately through malice, or through ill luck or circumstance, or completely accidentally by simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time. We sent out inquiries, and discovered the woman had been a volva when she was younger, but had broken her vows and cast aside her teachings long before. In her old age she'd gained a reputation in her village for stirring trouble: spreading rumors, attempting to start quarrels between strangers and claiming they were cursed. We—your mother, the council of elders, and I—decided the safest course was to set the verses aside, and merely watch to see if any other evidence arose to support them. Nothing did, for centuries."

"And then I came to Midgard," said Loki.

"No. Then you went to Jotunheim, with your brother, and seemed to go mad."

"You mean he wasn't always a complete whack-job?" said Barton, and both Nat and the Cap gave him quelling looks, along with a pretty menacing glower from Thor.

The Norns spoke up next. "Rest your heart, guardian: Odin knew nothing of any prophecies when he adopted you as an infant. You were not taken with the intent to lock you away for safekeeping." Loki… actually twitched at that, Tony noticed. Huh. "And be further at peace: the majority of those verses were actually memories from another lifetime, from another _cycle_."

"A question, great ladies," said Thor. "What do you mean by 'memories'?"

"For that matter, what do you mean by 'cycle'?" asked Tony. The big glass statue tipped Her head thoughtfully.

"Your mortal skalds put it well, when they sang, _Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end_," said She. "Ragnarök comes. The universe ends, but existence does not. Nothing is ever truly lost. Souls are not annihilated, but reborn. Yggdrasil sprouts anew. Existence is a palimpsest—"

"A what, now?" interrupted Barton.

"Oh. I know this one." Steve piped up, a look of surprise on his face. "In the Middle Ages, parchment was hard to come by sometimes, so the monks would take a page, scrape the ink off of it, and reuse it. Write over it. But you could usually still see traces of the writing that had been there before." He rubbed the back of his neck, looking at them sheepishly. "Art appreciation class."

"Precisely, son of Sarah," said the Norns, making Steve blink. "Ragnarök scrapes the parchment clean, and we and others like us are free to write upon it once more. Or if you prefer the image of us as weavers, then Ragnarök is when we remove the cloth from our loom and begin again. On occasion, however, a memory, an impression, from the previous cycle will remain."

"And that is all these prophecies were?" asked Odin warily.

"For the most part," said the Norns, which, yeah, not actually reassuring at all. She stepped closer to the balcony, and light shone through Her body, casting beams of gold across Loki's face. "In that age, you were Loptr, the blood-brother of Wotan, his companion on many journeys. You were as fickle as flame, then; by turns you could be calm as coals on the hearth, fierce as the forge-flame, or wicked as wildfire. But Wotan broke his vows never to harm Loptr, murdered his innocent sons, and by their blood bound Loptr to an eternity of suffering. Millennia passed in which all Loptr knew was physical torment and emotional anguish; he knew only pain and grief and despair, until his mind broke apart and all that was left was rage. Loptr brought about the end, his fire a conflagration that destroyed all until Yggdrasil fell. But it can be argued that he never would have done so, fickle though he was, if Wotan had not betrayed and driven him to madness first."

"How is this to bring me peace?" asked Loki. His voice was small. Horrified, and that was another thing that Tony hadn't thought Loki was capable of.

"You are not Loptr," She said simply. "You have not lived his life. He was blood-brother to Wotan, and they adventured together, encouraging one another and each trying to outdo the other in acts of trickery and deceit, until Wotan betrayed and destroyed him. In this life, you are his son, and rather than competing with him, you have learned what it is to be deceived, while you are yet young enough to choose another path." And didn't that little hint just raise a few questions for Tony. "Your brother is Thor, and while you, child, are yet as changeable as the wind, the two of you balance one another, and rein one another in. Moreover, one of Thor's virtues is his stalwart loyalty. He will never betray you; on that you may take our word if you cannot accept his." Loki looked down at his hands, clasped on the table in front of him. "Finally," She said, "Loptr's mother was Laufey and his father Farbauti, 'Cruel Striker' of the Jotnar. In this cycle, Laufey sired you, but the one you have always called mother is Frigga."

He shut his eyes for a second, as Thor's hand came up to squeeze the back of his neck. The vessel turned away from the balcony and observed the pair of them for a second.

"Be at peace, guardian."

Loki said nothing, but the bottle of liquor he'd poured for himself vanished from the sideboard and reappeared next to him. Still without speaking, he poured a measure into his cup and tossed it back, again with the full-body shudder.

"How much of that are you planning to drink?" asked Tony.

"There is a fine line with this particular beverage," replied Loki calmly, "between being too drunk to speak, and just drunk enough not to care what one says. I intend to flirt with that boundary for as long as possible, and eventually cross it."

"Brother," began Thor, but Loki waved him off.

"We are but echoes," he said, "our souls repeating the same lives again and again, with only the tiniest of variations from one cycle to the next. It would seem that I was the bringer of Ragnarök before, brother; do you think me incapable of realizing that the final battle will _always_ be tied to me in some fashion? All that the Nine Realms know of the Mad Titan anymore are fragments of legend, and yet of all the beings alive in Yggdrasil, _I_ have had the misfortune to meet him personally." He chuckled, poured himself another measure. "More than that, I know what he wants, and it is _worse _than the End of All Things. Were I to bring Ragnarök again, it would be a _mercy killing_ compared to what he will do." Tony wondered how much of Loki's shudder that time really had to do with the taste of his drink.

"Which is what?" pressed Natasha, but Loki just smiled beatifically. There was the faintest flush across his nose and cheeks now, and he was leaning back on his cushion and partly against Thor's shoulder, as relaxed as a cat in a window.

"Can't tell you," he said sunnily, "the Norns said so. I have to reveal to you all the details of my downfall first. But do not worry, Agent Romanov, I am certain you will be entertained by them."

Tony would really, really appreciate it if Loki would stop acting like a reflection of Tony, all the way down to the whole _cope-with-a-shitty-life-by-getting-drunk-and-pretending-it's-roses _thing.

"So," the man said cheerfully, "where were we before I learned that the whole point of my existence is to bring about the end of everything else's… existences?"

"A distraction," said Natasha. "Something to do with killing a couple of Jotnar and a couple of guards."

"Ah yes," said Loki. "Very good. _Thank_ you, lady."

She glowered. He just smiled at her.

"On the day of Thor's coronation, in the middle of his ceremony, at the very _moment_ he was about to be named king, two or three Frost Giants broke into Asgard's vault, where we keep all the most powerful treasures. They killed a couple of guards, as you have already heard, and attempted to take back the Casket of Ancient Winters." He tilted his head thoughtfully. "Which, upon further contemplation, I cannot fault them for in the slightest. If I were pretending to speak in my defense, I would say that I only promised them the _opportunity _to regain the Casket, and that it was likely they would face dangers and be unable to succeed. It's no surprise that they refused to heed my warning, the Casket being their world's holiest artifact and best chance to save their people from a certain and protracted doom."

Loki shook himself out of thought and continued. "In fact, they did face danger. As I planned. You see, we've a guardian—no, sorry, _Odin_ has a guardian—in the vault, a mechanical behemoth known fondly as the Destroyer. And, to no one's surprise except perhaps the Frost Giants', it appeared as soon as they touched the Casket, sounding the alarm and halting the coronation ceremony; and it opened its great maw, exactly as it was supposed to do, and it destroyed them. Hurrah, the kingdom is safe once more, the Casket remains safely on its pedestal, and oh, coincidentally, Thor is not king."

He gave a sigh, maybe only slightly exaggerated for theatrics. "That ought to have been the end of it. The plan to that point had gone off without a hitch, barring the deaths of the guards. The three of us went marching down to the vault to inspect the damage, and Thor, pouting like a child at having his special party interrupted, was building up to a lovely state of vexation, in front of the only witness who mattered, just as I had hoped. He paced about like a penned ox, growling that the Jotnar ought to be taught a _lesson_, that they needed to _pay _for offending him. Couched in terms of defending Asgard, of course. Odin reminded him that this was not the action of all Jotunheim, but merely of a few, and that they _had_ paid. As far as he was concerned, the matter was closed. But Thor was not to be dissuaded, and said that 'as king of Asgard'—" He sat up, clenching a fist, and pounded it on the table, his voice imitating Big Thunder pretty convincingly.

"—but then Odin interrupted him, reminding him forcefully that he was _not _king." Loki leaned back again, thudding his shoulder into Thor's. "And I thought _that_ would be enough, but no. Odin _still_ said nothing about delaying, still seemed not to notice the disaster in the making that was Thor's potential kingship. Something more needed to be done. Odin needed irrefutable proof of Thor's unsuitability for the throne."

"So you did put the idea into my head," growled Thor.

Loki's head tilted back to rest on Thor's shoulder, his eyes fixed on the ceiling. "As I have mentioned before, the ease with which you could be manipulated was nothing short of terrifying," he replied. He slewed around to look at the side of Thor's face. "All I did was say that I thought you were right. I soothed you after that ridiculous tantrum in the dining hall, agreed with your foolish assertions, and _then_ I reminded you that you could do nothing without defying Father… and of course you decided that the only thing to do then was _exactly that_. I had expected you to press your demand to Odin, but no, you were all for running off immediately. You made your own choices, brother."

"Okay, so how did he defy Odin?" asked Steve.

"He decided to violate a thousand-year-old treaty and journey to Jotunheim to, as he put it, _demand answers_ of their king." Loki rolled his eyes. "As if a prince could speak to a king of any realm in that manner, as if he would have any right to make such demands of anyone when not on his own soil, or speaking to his own subjects. As if he weren't clutching Mjolnir with a _gleam_ in his eye as he spoke of his plan."

"And what was _your_ plan?" pressed Natasha.

"To stop him before he went too far," Loki shrugged. "He persuaded his usual crowd of sycophants to accompany him despite their initial misgivings; whether they are all truly that stupid or simply become spineless at the prospect of facing Thor's temper, I do not know. But persuade them he did, and as we headed to the stables I stopped and spoke to one of the palace guard, ordered him to hurry to Odin to inform him of Thor's plan. When we made it all the way to the Bifrost without being stopped, I stepped forward, knowing that Heimdall does not trust me any farther than the end of his nose, _knowing_ that if I asked on Thor's behalf he would refuse on principle. Except that he didn't refuse. He gave me one of his usual heavy glares, the cosmic voyeur perpetually irritated with me because I do not actually appreciate being constantly spied upon and have learned to cloak myself—"

"Okay, pause, sweetcheeks. What the hell are you talking about?"

Loki took a breath. "As Thor has mastery over thunder and lightning, as I can walk the branches of Yggdrasil, Heimdall—that is the name of Odin's _esteemed_ gatekeeper—can see and hear everything that goes on throughout the Nine Realms. Wheresoever he turns his focus, he can watch, and overhear, and tattle to the All-Father about what he learns. He is personally and deeply offended that I have the capacity to hide myself from his constant surveillance. It galls him to think that there might be anyone in this universe who might not _want _to be continually stared at. _Clearly, _that I can hide myself must mean that whatever I am doing out of his sight is of sinister intent."

"You mean, everything-everything?" asked Tony. Because… ew.

"Indeed, he is listening to us even now," said Loki; "as I am out of my cell and not sufficiently dead to please him, he must pay attention to me while he can. Plus we have spoken his name, so he must eavesdrop on our conversation to see if perhaps we are doing something worth reporting back to the All-Father later." Loki leaned forward and poured from the bottle in front of him, into his cup yet again. This time Tony was able to catch a glimpse of it, some sort of purple liqueur that smelled faintly of spoiled flowers. "A toast to you, good Heimdall!" he cried, raising the cup high. "May you be ever vigilant, and with every passing day, may you take your mighty sword, Hofudh, and _shove_ it farther up your—"

Thor clapped one hand over Loki's mouth and the other to the back of his head.

"A bit off-topic, brother," he said mildly, as Loki flailed and glared at him.


	7. Chapter 7

Tony managed to keep himself from laughing out loud, but only just, as Loki yanked himself free of Thor's grip. He shot a quick look around the table, and saw Hawkeye leaning forward with a gleam in his eye and the beginnings of a wicked grin.

"So you're a talkative drunk, is what you're saying?" Tony asked.

"Thor, you are a foul-breathed lummox who fornicates with trolls," began Loki, but Thor merely smiled, his expression absolutely _sappy _with fondness.

"I have missed you too, brother," he said.

"Clearly you are also too thick-headed to grasp that you are being insulted, not to mention incapable of hanging onto an original thought unless both your hands are free."

"Oh, was that meant to be an insult? It did not even rhyme," he replied, his smile widening as Loki's glare deepened. "Either you are out of practice and off your usual form, or else you do not truly mean what you are saying." He nudged Loki's shoulder with his own… and lo and behold, Loki's scowl gradually faded into a wry grin of his own. It actually looked pretty good on him.

"Yeah, you two make a cute couple and everything," said Barton, "but if we have to sit through Story Time with the God of Lies I'd rather we get it over with quick."

"Of course, Agent Barton," Loki said smoothly. He watched with amusement as Barton's expression darkened. "I live to serve."

"Yeah, yeah, that's good to hear, fuck you very much."

"Heimdall, Odin's gatekeeper, ought to have stopped Thor and his little band of warmongers." Loki slipped back into his story as if he were still sober and his little tangent had never occurred. "Travel to Jotunheim was expressly forbidden, but instead of stopping us, Heimdall actually _encouraged _Thor to go. He was willing to allow Thor to defy his king, because he mistrusted me_ that_ much. He said that he also wanted to know how the Jotnar got into the vault, but if that were truly the case perhaps he ought to have asked _anyone other than Thor _to investigate. Do you know, it never occurred to me to ask before, but tell me, All-Father: does that not make your servant equally culpable in the events that followed?"

The All-Father just glared at Loki and said nothing.

"Ah. I see. Forgive my oversight, _Odin_, I had forgotten you are pathologically incapable of admitting that other people might be at fault besides me, on any given occasion."

"Loki." Thor squeezed the back of his brother's neck. "You are becoming distracted again."

"Hmm. So I am." He leaned forward and examined the contents of the bottle carefully. "Perhaps I am a bit too close to that boundary I described earlier." Loki sighed, and leaned back against the cushion. "We arrived on the planet, and only then did Hogun speak up and declare that we shouldn't have come. A bit late to exercise prudence, but then as I've mentioned, they have always been followers of Thor's will, and tend to avoid thinking for themselves."

"That is not true, brother."

"You can tell the story your way in any mead-hall you like, and make yourself the flawless hero as always. I, however, am telling it my way."

"And how much of your way is the truth?" asked Natasha.

"The Norns will surely stop me if I begin to tell any important falsehoods," he shrugged. "Perhaps my perceptions are actually correct."

Natasha rolled her eyes.

"In any case," he continued, "the Jotnar were hidden, observing us like sensible savages, no doubt overhearing Thor's pronouncement that they were merely cowards, which he spoke _as we walked into King Laufey's court_. We were outnumbered and surrounded, and I tried to point this out to my brother. He growled at me to _know my place."_ Loki gritted his teeth for a moment before continuing, as Big Thunder's face turned red."Thor made his demands, Laufey pointed them out for the childish posturing they were, and before Thor could grow too angry, told us to go home. Said we were inviting war upon our heads, and had no idea what it would really mean. In an effort to salvage the situation, and once again to clean up one of Thor's messes, I accepted the king's offer to permit us to leave peacefully." He shut his eyes for a second before looking at Thor sideways. "And then what happened, brother mine?"

"One of their warriors instigated—"

Loki cleared his throat, loudly.

Thor sighed gustily. "As we turned to leave, one of the Jotun warriors insulted me, and I grew angry."

"One of the Jotun warriors said, '_Run along home, little princess'_," corrected Loki. "And you promptly killed him."

Tony winced. Yeah, bad move on the part of Lion-O and the Thundercats. Glancing around, none of the other Avengers looked too impressed either. Odin's face was, as usual, implacable and stern.

"As I mentioned, we were outnumbered from the beginning," said Loki, "and they were defending their homes against a handful of invading hotheads, but Thor and his friends—well, except perhaps for Sif, she's generally sensible—_they_ saw the battle as a great game. A bit of fun, to while away an afternoon and cheer themselves up after the disappointment of the botched coronation. Blood stained the snow on both sides, Jotun bodies piling up around us, and Volstagg's arm was badly burned. The Jotnar, it turns out, have the ability to suck all the heat from an object, or from the flesh of their enemies, freezing it instantly." He looked up at them, meeting their gazes one by one. "Have you ever seen fabric, or armor, literally _shatter _from cold? That is what one of them did to Volstagg. He warned the rest of us, of course."

"Where were you in all this?" asked Steve.

"Fighting," said Loki simply. "I was loyal to my brother, for all his faults. I would not have him killed for any reason, certainly not as a result of his own stupidity. And besides, as I mentioned earlier, we had all been brought up to think that they were _only _Jotnar. It wasn't as if killing them would _matter_. Of _course_ they were bloodthirsty savages. We would be doing the realms a _favor_ by getting rid of a few of them."

Bruce was the one who grimaced now, running a hand through his hair, looking as uncomfortable as Tony felt. Racists. Nasty, nasty racist bigots. That was actually probably important intel to have on Aesir culture, unless maybe the racism was restricted to the young and the reckless. Thor seemed to have grown out of it, anyway—he certainly looked embarrassed enough about it now, at least—and Loki kept making noises like he had, too.

"I generally fight better with long-range weapons. Throwing knives, that sort of thing. I don't tend to close with my opponents. But one of them closed with me, and attempted the freezing touch on my arm as well. My armor and sleeve were instantly coated in hoarfrost, and then crumbled away in little pieces, and he clutched my bare flesh…" Loki reached forward and picked up his cup, refilling it and avoiding eye contact with the rest of them. To Tony's surprise, his hand shook as he picked up the cup, and his voice rasped as he said, "Only my arm did not burn. In fact, I felt no pain whatsoever." He paused again, swallowed heavily. "Instead, my arm turned blue."

He tossed back the entire contents of the cup and slammed it down on the table, still shuddering from head to toe.

_Oh_, thought Tony. Oh, shit.

"I think we were both equally shocked, that warrior and I, though I was surely the more horrified of the pair of us. I used his moment of distraction to stab him in the throat. I looked around quickly, but none of the others had noticed what happened." Loki stared at nothing for a second, then seemed to remember himself, blinking rapidly and giving a little shake of his head. "The battle continued. Fandral took a grievous wound. I shouted at Thor that we needed to _go,_ and all he did was keep fighting and call back, 'Then go!' as if the idea of him staying behind to slake his bloodlust against a hundred Jotnar was inconsequential. He was willing in that moment to abandon his friends, to abandon _me,_ to fight or fall on our own, so caught up was he in the rage of battle."

Loki paused again, so Steve leaned forward in his seat. "Thor, is this true?"

The big guy only nodded, eyes downcast. "It is." He turned to face his brother. "Although I did not know of the details surrounding Loki and his opponent."

"The rest of us fled back toward the Bifrost site," said Loki, ignoring his brother's obvious invitation to talk about it. "They summoned some sort of enormous guard beast, and that finally got Thor's attention, I suspect more because it represented a better _challenge to his skills _than because it was pursuing his wounded friends. He killed it, and rejoined our group, but we had been backed into a corner, and Jotun reinforcements had arrived. Thor _still _did not see the wisdom in either surrender or flight… and then the Bifrost activated, and Odin arrived upon his mighty steed." Loki shook his head. "Thor's first words to him were an invitation to 'finish them together,' but it seemed that Odin had finally opened his eyes to the flaws in Thor's character. He silenced his son, exchanged a few words with their king, Laufey, and brought us home."

"What kind of words?" asked the captain.

"Trying to excuse Thor's behavior," said Loki, then he stopped and shook his head. Odin glanced up in surprise, clearly having expected Loki to keep bashing everyone he could as he recounted the events. "Trying to convince Laufey to ignore Thor's behavior, so that the cease-fire between our two realms would hold. Laufey said no. That Thor would get what he came for.

"And then, as I said, we were brought back to Asgard. Fa—Odin was furious. Sent the others away to get Volstagg and Fandral to the healers, leaving the two of us with more privacy while he berated Thor. Who berated him right back, still caught up in the excitement of battle. Finally, _finally _Odin was seeing that my brother was unsuited for the throne, or at least, not ready yet and would possibly not become ready for some time. And, again, that ought to have been the end of it." Loki shook his head. "Going to Jotunheim was never part of my plan. Rekindling war, effectively committing treason… If we had been stopped before we ever got there—if the guard had reached the All-Father sooner, if Heimdall hadn't been in such a petty mood that he decided to allow such folly—things would never have escalated so far. Odin might perhaps have given Thor another lecture, or perhaps revoked a few privileges as he has done in the past."

"A lecture? For _killing_ people?" Hawkeye was looking at Loki like he was an idiot, and Tony had to admit he had a point. This was a seriously fucked-up bunch of people, or else Loki was just really fucked up for thinking that would be all that would happen.

"If we hadn't _made it _to Jotunheim, Thor probably wouldn't have killed anybody, so _yes_," said Loki, giving Barton a _don't-be-a-moron_ look in return. "A lecture, for throwing a tantrum not befitting a man of his station, privileges revoked for defying the express commands of his king and for generally not thinking about anything other than his own selfish wants. A significant delay to the date of his eventual coronation, until he was ready. Perhaps if he were feeling exceptionally generous, passing the honor to me, even if temporarily—but that was a naïve thought which could never come to pass, though I didn't realize it at the time."

The pitcher of mead appeared out of thin air on the table in front of Loki, next to the first bottle of liquor, and he refilled his cup as he went on. "But, as it turned out, Thor had finally gone too far, or perhaps Odin was in a panic because _I_ had gone to Jotunheim. I will not pretend to understand his motives. But he stripped my brother of his powers and rendered him as weak as a mortal, and then flung him away to Midgard. I distinctly recall trying to step in, to calm both of them down, before it happened. Odin snarled at me like an angry beast. Ironic, that."

"What's that supposed to mean?" asked Natasha.

"Oh, never fear, we're coming to that." He looked over at the Norns' vessel again, sipping at his mead with his eyebrows raised. "You've been suspiciously quiet, ladies. Anything you wish to add? Any particular harrowing, humiliating detail you wish for me to pursue further?"

"Loki," Thor leaned in close, a worried look on his face, "I know you've no desire to tell this story, but please, do not let your displeasure lead you to anger them."

"And why not?" said Loki blithely. "They call me guardian and presumably wish to _keep_ me. They have informed me I am meant to be the Destroyer of Worlds. What could they possibly do to me for my insolence?"

"They could kill you!"

Loki shook his head sadly. "Brother, you keep forgetting, I am already supposed to be dead, twice over. At this point, perhaps the worst thing they could do to me is continue to keep me alive."

Thor looked lost for words for a moment, before he finally said, "That is not the worst thing for me."

The vessel spoke up before Loki could respond to that. "You are telling your tale as we have wished it. We have no desire for you to suffer, but it is necessary for these others to know what you have done. You deserve to have your bravery made known, guardian."

"Supposing I did not want to be a guardian, whatever that is supposed to mean."

The big glass statue almost seemed to sigh at that. Which was weird, but also maybe a measure of just how irritating Loki could be. Exasperating the beings who could unmake the entire world if they were to simply show up in person? That was some epic-level annoyance skill, right there.

"We are the Weavers of Fate. With every Ragnarök, the fabric of creation is undone, though the threads remain, and we are given the opportunity to weave it anew," She said. "The thread that represents each person's life contains its own variations in color, its own twist and thickness, coarseness or softness. And each thread alters those around it and is altered in turn, changing the nature of the fabric. We do not control the entirety of creation, as many in the Nine Realms assume. We weave lives together, attempting to create an image which perfectly depicts the meaning of all existence. We have yet to succeed; Ragnarök unravels the weave and allows us to try again. With each attempt, we make variations, place different threads side-by-side, and see if the changes improve the whole."

"What does this have to do with me?" asked Loki.

"It is true that you have been the harbinger of Ragnarök, in past cycles—previous attempts," said the Norns. "But in this cycle, we have made changes, which we have already described, that affect your thread. You are correct in believing that you are still placed near to the End of All Things in our tapestry, but whether or not you will be its cause this time is not yet known. You may even, by your own choices, distance yourself from it entirely. Our tapestry may not be perfect, despite the changes we have wrought. Ragnarök may yet come; however, should you embrace the task we have set before you, guardian, it will not come at your hands, and you will prevent, as you have already hinted, something worse."

"It would be great if you could skip ahead a second and just tell us what you're hinting at," said Tony.

"The Titan," said Loki, at the same time as the vessel said, "Annihilation."

* * *

><p><strong>These characters, I swear. Never want to go where I tell them to.<strong>


	8. Chapter 8

All around the table, people were either gaping or looking skeptical—mostly skeptical, although Odin was nodding, which made Tony very, very uncomfortable in the pit of his stomach.

"Ragnarök is the End of All Things," said She; "the civilizations of the Nine Realms destroy themselves, all life succumbs to death, and eventually even their planets die. Yggdrasil is devoid of fruit; her leaves fall; her branches wither, down to the roots." Tony took a moment to absorb the sheer scale they were talking about here, assuming that map had been accurate. "And then we gather up what remains and begin it all again. Your mortal science speculates upon that moment in which all is reborn."

"The Big Bang," said Bruce.

"Indeed," said the Norns. "However, remember what the guardian told you of Thanos."

"He's insane and he can't die?" put in Hawkeye. She turned and gestured for Loki to continue.

"He is mad, he cannot die by any known means, and he very much wishes to do so," said Loki. "He sees Death as a lover whom he must entice, and so he threatens every living thing. Perhaps from a practical standpoint, he might believe that if he ends all life, he will be caught up in the massive current of living souls flowing toward the realms of the dead, which would allow him to cross over at last. But…" He trailed off for a second, his lips pressed together and his gaze faraway. "I trust that the Norns have made clear to you that Ragnarök has a _pattern_… a structure which it follows. The strategy that the Mad Titan wishes to employ would not only bring about the End of All Things, it would damage that structure."

"What strategy is this?" asked Odin.

Loki looked directly at the other man. "The Infinity Gauntlet," he said, and Odin's sharp intake of breath could be heard by everyone in the room.

Okay, that couldn't be good.

Loki looked at the rest of them, voice and face as sober as Tony had ever seen it. "The Titan is already fantastically powerful, compared to what you are accustomed to," he said. "He has destroyed entire planets before, and still his lover, Death, denies him. So he seeks greater power still. If he cannot be swept across the boundary between the realms of the living and the dead, then he will attempt to _obliterate_ that boundary, and force himself into the… afterlife, as you called it. If he becomes capable of that, he will have obtained the power to quite literally rewrite the rules of how space and time _function_. There would be no renewal. Whereas Ragnarök threatens all living beings with death, and then the dead are eventually reborn, the Titan's strategy would destroy even the dead." He blinked once, slowly. "To belabor a metaphor, Ragnarök pulls the threads out of the tapestry and the Norns reuse them to make a new one. What the Titan hopes to achieve would cause there to _be_ no thread for the Three Sisters to work with."

"That is correct, guardian," said the Norns, and Thor swallowed heavily, his face pale. "Thanos, in his madness, does not understand that death is merely a changed state of existence; he thinks of it as _unmaking_. His desire to unmake himself, therefore, threatens all Yggdrasil. Should one realm fall, the rest will topple as well. And should Yggdrasil fall, rather than fading away naturally, the energies released will cause instability in all the other World Trees of the universe. Eventually all existence would be unmade."

Tony raised his eyebrows, blinking rapidly. Because, well… shit.

"Okay, look." Clint was leaning back in his seat, pinching at the bridge of his nose. "All this is some heavy cosmic stuff, I get it. Thanos, bad news. But how the hell is it relevant to us? I mean, we stopped an alien invasion, but there's nothing on earth that would be able to… rewrite the rules, or whatever this asshole said. We just don't have that kind of power. And where does Loki factor in, apart from meeting the guy and deciding to work for him?"

"I did no such thing," said Loki flatly. "As much as you may despise me, Agent Barton, even I am not so hideous a monster as to wish for the destruction of my own home. Of the souls of the beloved dead."

"Yeah, having a hard time believing that," said Steve.

"Quite frankly, mortal, I do not care in the slightest what you believe. Were it not for the Three Sisters, I would still be in my cell, hidden away so that the All-Father would not have to think too much about my continued existence, nor trouble to ask himself the sorts of questions that require one to think before one answers them. Were it not for the Three Sisters, you would never have been brought to Asgard, for he sees you as an inferior species and likely can barely stomach being in the same room with you." Loki ignored Barton's muttered "and you don't?" and finished, "Were it not for the Three Sisters, I would not be forced to tell this story and you would not be forced to listen to it, so if there is anything you dislike about your present situation, I recommend you take it up with them. Much good may it do you."

He looked around the room with a challenging spark in his eye, but no one else spoke up.

"Now then. At the very beginning of this tawdry tale I said that I had made very poor choices with very good intentions, and that each consequence and development of those choices narrowed my perceived options a little further each time." He turned his palm up, not quite shrugging. "Here were the first such developments: my arm, strangely unharmed by the jotun's attack, and Thor, banished. We had no way of knowing at the time whether that was a temporary arrangement, or if the All-Father had, in fact, actually disowned his son. He'd cast out Mjolnir as well, so he presumably did not wish to leave my brother completely defenseless on a primitive realm, but it was still a shock. My world had become unsettled in the span of only a few minutes."

Loki worked his jaw back and forth thoughtfully, staring at nothing. "To whom could I speak, about either event? To whom might I turn for solace or reassurance, or even a chance to clear my head? Not Odin, surely. His temper might be slower to ignite than Thor's, but did not subside for days at a time once roused. Not Mother; dear though she has always been to my heart, she has ever served as the apologist to Odin's actions, and frankly I feared what she might have to say about my strange malady. Thor was gone. Thor's friends? No, for when we gathered after their wounds were treated, all they could talk about was how they might persuade me to convince Odin to lift the banishment." His expression darkened. "They were little better than a bunch of squabbling toddlers, pouting that their little _playmate_ could no longer join them to frolic and chase seagulls. As if the All-Father would simply change his mind and bring Thor home, after he had reignited a _war_. As if he would ever do such a thing on _my_ say-so."

Loki lifted his cup and took a swallow of mead, a sneer on his lips. "They were grateful the All-Father had come to our rescue but wondered how he had even known to come. And when I revealed that I had made arrangements, telling the palace guard as a contingency, well. One would have expected a bit of gratitude, since without my planning we would all have died, but no—apparently that qualified as some sort of sneaking trickery, a betrayal of the _brave and mighty Thor_. When I attempted to explain why he had been banished, how he had endangered all our lives for the sake of his wounded pride, Sif gave me a look of disgust. Eventually I left to see to my arm, but behind me I heard her say that I had always been jealous of Thor. Clearly my refusing to speak on his behalf had nothing to do with the good of Asgard and everything to do with envy. Thor was the one who nearly led us to our deaths, but I was the one who could not be trusted."

Thor was looking at him sadly, taking in the news of what had happened while he'd been on earth. "I had wondered why you now speak so poorly of them, brother."

Loki shrugged. "They were ever your friends and not mine," he said. "They would only respect my opinions if you acknowledged them first; would only support my ideas until you spoke against them. The instant you disagreed with me, they would withdraw from me and flock to you, showing themselves for the fawning bootlickers they truly are. In retrospect, I do not even know why I was surprised by their behavior." He shook his head, and although there was anger in his voice, Tony could see sadness on his face as he said, "I will never again make the mistake of calling them friends."

His brother sighed and leaned forward, reaching for the bottle of mead in front of Loki. "You said you left them to see to your arm."

Loki nodded. "I had thought of and cast aside countless possibilities; that I was cursed, that my magic had protected me somehow… that it was a trick of the light and I had merely imagined what I saw. Finally I decided that the only way to test what had happened was to expose myself to Jotun magic again and see what transpired, so I went to the vault."

"The Casket of Ancient Winters," guessed Thor.

"Indeed." He glanced up at the rest of them, his gaze landing on Natasha for some reason. "Another poor decision, despite a reasonable motive." Then he glanced across to Odin, and a smile slipped across his features; he reached for his drink, and his eyes flicked to Tony. "Would you like to see what I did next?"

"Depends," Tony shot back, "is it going to get us killed?"

"Won't even scuff your pretty suit of armor," said Loki. He refilled his cup with the purple cough-syrup stuff and tossed it back, shuddered, and smiled a little wider this time. "Not a single hair on your heads will be harmed, and as a bonus you can enjoy a reenactment of the exact moment in which your most despised enemy lost his mind and wept at the feet of the man he had always called father."

And with that, he held up both hands in front of him, one palm up, one palm down, as if he were holding an invisible kitten. When he pulled his hands apart, though, there was suddenly a funky crystal box in front of him on the table, with something inside that glowed brightly. There were graceful curves etched into the glass, and handles recessed into either side. It looked like some kind of fairytale treasure chest.

"You stole it," said Odin.

"An argument could be made that I merely reclaimed it," said Loki, "since after all you stole it first." The air around the chest was turning to fog and frost was starting to condense onto the table. Tony tried to lean forward discreetly and lay a gauntleted finger on the box, maybe get a peek at what was inside, but Loki caught his wrist in a grip of steel. "You are mortal," he said flatly. "And I presume you would like to leave this place alive."

"Is that a threat?" demanded Clint.

"Not even Thor can touch this box without coming to harm," Loki replied, "and while your armor is impressive, I doubt it could protect you from _this_. I suspect that the only way Odin himself was able to bring it away from Jotunheim in the first place was through the generous application of his own seidr." He paused, taking a deep breath. "I, however…"

And he reached out, slowly, with trepidation, and took hold of the treasure chest's handles. There was a faint sound, barely audible, that Tony recognized after a minute as the almost-silent hiss of snow falling on a calm night. Whatever was inside the box glowed brighter, and there was a thrum of energy that made the hairs on Tony's neck stand on end, and the arc reactor in his chest seem to vibrate in resonance.

Loki's hands were getting frostbitten, was the first thing Tony thought; his fingers were turning an almost cartoonish color, like, literally blue with cold. Except that was wrong, because the blue was spreading, up his hands and arms, disappearing under the sleeves of his prison-wear pajamas, to reappear again at his throat and keep working upward. His eyes turned bloodshot, then just bloody… no, Tony realized, that was wrong too, because the irises vanished so that the entire eye was a pure, clear red.

Behind the advancing line of blue, raised lines appeared on Loki's skin and traveled upward too, sweeping and graceful, and Tony realized they were very similar to the arcs inscribed into the panels of the treasure chest. Parallel lines traced the curve of the muscles on his arms, caressed his throat up his chin to touch his lower lip, and delineated a crown on his forehead. Occasionally one of the lines had a sharp bend to it, like the ones at his forearms that took a turn to the outside of his wrist and again at his elbow, but other than that they reminded Tony of racing stripes, following the contours of the other man's musculature. They were… elegant.

Loki looked up at Thor, and the red eyes sort of made his expression hard to read, but if Tony didn't know better, he would have said Loki was nervous. His eyes flicked across Thor's face and away, down to his hands and back up again; the red reflected light back at the rest of the room like a cat's.

"When we were children," he said quietly, "you once vowed to hunt the monsters down. Neither of us realized there was one right under your nose the entire time." His voice had an added growl to it now, making it sound a little deeper, but a person didn't need the Black Widow's skills to hear the tremor in it.

Thor had watched the change intently, and Tony hadn't quite been able to read the expression on his face. But the big guy's voice was warm when he said, "I see no monsters here," and reached up to rest a hand on Loki's cheek.

Loki flinched back, hard, taking one blue hand off the treasure chest. "I could burn you," he warned.

"So be it, then," said Thor, and since his kid brother's face was out of reach, he deliberately took hold of Loki's forearm instead. Loki just stared at him, red eyes bright with more than just reflected light. He looked down at the hand on his arm, and Tony leaned around to see better, but nothing was happening.

"Does it hurt?" he asked.

"No," said Thor. "My brother's skin is merely skin."

"What about you, Blue Man? What does that feel like when it's happening? The… change, I mean."

The lines on Loki's throat rippled as he swallowed, and his new voice failed him the first time he tried to speak. There was a tear on his cheek as he finally answered, "Like coming home."

The sound of his own voice seemed to jolt him out of the intimacy of the moment. With another sweep of his hands, the box seemed to fold in on itself before vanishing, and the blue began to creep back down off of his face and down his neck. Loki sat with his hands on the table, and his eyes on his hands. He spoke with quiet intensity as he got back to his story.

"The man I had known as a father for my entire life caught me in the act of touching the Casket and ordered me to stop, but it was too late. I had already seen… already _felt_. I asked if I was cursed, and he only said 'no'. I asked what I might be instead, and he only claimed I was his son. I was still… reeling from shock, and horror, and from the events of the day, and his answer was entirely insufficient to calm me. In fact, I saw it as a blatant falsehood, saw both his answers as an attempt to tell me the absolute bare minimum possible rather than giving me what I most needed to hear." He swallowed, his eyes darting back and forth as if trying to scour his memories. "He confirmed the terrible secret he had hidden from me my entire life—that I was not his child by blood. That he had found an infant in a temple, too small… he claims I was left to die but I no longer trust his word on that."

Odin leaned forward as if to speak, but Loki wasn't finished. Tony watched his fingers curl and fidget on the table.

"I asked him… I needed to know, I asked him why he would take me, why he would turn away from the battle, the, the _war_ he had just won, why he would take an infant when he was… _knee-deep_ in Jotun blood… and he evaded my answer, again. What—what _horrible secret_ could he possibly be attempting to avoid telling me? Odin does everything with a purpose—_compassion_ does not move him, what could he _possibly—_what reason would he have for stealing away a Jotun whelp and pretending to raise it as his own?" His throat clicked as he swallowed, his breath shuddering.

"Brother?" Thor leaned toward him, concern written all over his face.

"I was a political _pawn_," said Loki. "He wanted to _use_ me to unite the two realms. 'Bring about an alliance, bring about a permanent peace, through you,' those were his exact words. It had nothing to do with compassion, nothing to do with, with protecting an innocent child; he only wanted more _power _and thought he could gain it through me. And no wonder! He recognized me, somehow, by the, the markings on my skin perhaps, or rumors he'd heard across the battlefield, word that the king of the Jotnar had a _son. _He knew what I was, knew _whose_ I was, and stole me away, and then tried to justify it to me by saying I had been abandoned to die. Tried to excuse himself by saying those plans no longer mattered." The expression on his face turned then, from lost-puppy to anger. "Or perhaps that is why he realized that his intentions for me would bear no fruit. Perhaps he came to the conclusion that I _was_ abandoned, and figured out that he could raise no puppet king out of a giant's cub that they had already deemed too weak and pathetic to be permitted to live."

"Once again, you twist my words—"

_"I don't care about your words!" _Loki's scream echoed through the room as he leaped to his feet. "Your words to me are nothing but _lies! _And they mock _me_, call _me_ the God of Deceit, when it is _you_ who perpetrated a hoax that lasted a thousand years, upon a child who was foolish enough and hopeful enough and _naïve _enough to believe you! You persuaded your _wife _to play along with the ruse, and perhaps she was taken in by her own game eventually, because _her _love I never had cause to doubt. _You,_ however… you have _no idea_ how much I despise you, Odin King. You spent my entire childhood watching, didn't you, waiting for the day when my blood would reveal itself and prove me to be the _monster_ you always feared. _That_ is why you forgave Thor for every misdemeanor, _that _is why you sought to curb my every passion and quell my every attempt to reach _beyond my place_, _that _is why you permitted even the public to show scorn to the second prince of the realm—not merely because you favored him, but because you sought to protect him from becoming anything like me!"

* * *

><p><strong>This chapter had been crawling along, and then suddenly Loki got mad and next thing I knew it was nearly twice as long as any of the previous chapters. I cut some of that and saved it for next chapter.<strong>

**As always, thank you to those who read and especially those who review.**


	9. Chapter 9

"_You are_ _wrong,_ you petulant boy!" Odin roared back. "You _were_ my son! until you threw that away, with your greed, and your—"

"I was your _disappointment._"

"And it is _this _that makes you unworthy, your constant—"

Loki bared his teeth, seething. "I will not _ever_ measure myself to your standards of so-called worthiness, when you could apply them to a vain _warmonger_ and not to the son who was so desperate for your approval. Your notion of worthiness changes constantly and has _never_ included me."

"It is this very desperation that makes you weak—"

"Whoa, okay, hold on. Weak? Did you really just say weak, because, wow." Both men stopped to stare at Tony, and yeah, intimidating, given that one of them had already thrown him out of a window and both of them looked like they wanted to do it again. But he couldn't keep his mouth shut, not about this. "A son is weak when he wants his dad to look at him with something like respect instead of disgust or irritation?"

"Don't tell me you're taking his side, Stark," said Hawkeye.

"Not yet but I'm starting to," Tony shot back. He shook his head at Odin. These guys were supposed to be gods, and yet… "You are a grade-A asshole, aren't you?" he said in disbelief.

"Jesus, Tony, are you trying to get us killed?"

"A kid wants your approval and instead of being an actual father and giving it to him, you decide to shut him down and mock him as a weakling? Is that really what you did? And you did it to the kid you _picked, _too. I mean, you didn't have a choice with Thor, he was born and your son whether you liked it or not, but you _decided _to bring Loki home; and then, what? You changed your mind? Decided he wasn't worth the effort, so you could just turn your back on him when he turned out to be inconvenient?"

"You are inserting yourself into matters about which you know nothing," said Odin, haughtiness just _dripping _off of him.

"I dunno, I'd say you're in a room full of _experts_ on what it means to have a shitty father," Tony said with a shrug.

"Tony!" Trust Steve to be the one to try and rein him in.

"I mean, far as I know, the only person here who remembers a happy childhood is Thor, and isn't it funny that his own brother _doesn't remember_ the same thing he does?"

"What Loki remembers and what he claims to remember are seldom the same thing."

"And again, I gotta say, wow."

"It's a fair point," put in Bruce. "You raised a little kid from Jotunheim, in a culture that hates Jotunheim, and you never even told him. Were you planning on telling him, ever? On letting him know who he really was, or giving him time to come to terms with that?"

"He said he wanted to protect me from the truth," said Loki.

"What truth?" Bruce threw one hand in the air in exasperation. "What is there about being a Jotun, about belonging to any sentient species, that is so horrible a person would need to be protected from knowing anything about it, even though he _is_ one?"

"You recall what we were taught," said Thor, looking at the rest of the team. And yeah, yeah Tony did. Bunch of racists. Maybe to them being a Jotun really was a horrible thing. But to leave a kid ignorant of his own heritage and then have him find out like that…

Thor was apparently on the same page as the rest of them, because he looked over at Odin, shaking his head in disappointment, or maybe sorrow. "Were you trying to protect Loki from thinking himself a monster? It was you who permitted those beliefs to persist; you permitted the people to speak of the Jotnar as mindless savages, as vicious brutes, when you _knew_ better, when there was a brilliant, clever, studious, _audacious _Jotun right here in front of them." Thor had folded his arms and was looking at Odin as if seeing him for the first time. "You permitted Loki to believe such things, and then when he discovered the truth he decided they must be true of him as well." He turned to his brother, who was looking at him in a mix of residual anger and shock. "Is that not what happened?"

Loki blinked. "Yes, and worse." He studied Thor's face. "Everything I had ever believed was a lie. My place in the world, my position as a prince, as your brother… Even my _skin_ was a lie. I still have not looked upon an image of my own, true face. I only recognize myself in the mirror when I am wearing the disguise he put on me." His eyes darted around, not making eye contact with his brother, flicking off to the side and then back. "If even my very _species_ was a lie… then how could I trust any of the other things I had ever believed about myself?"

"Trust this," said Thor. "You are my brother and always will be."

Loki looked up again, and maybe the rest of the table couldn't see it, but Tony was close enough to pick up on the raw vulnerability in his eyes. Which was more than a little uncomfortable to look at; Tony didn't do emotion.

"I wish," Loki said finally, "that I could have been as certain of that then, as I am able to be now. So much would have happened differently, if…" He trailed off, turning his head away.

"Tony," Natasha spoke up, "even if your assessment is correct, about the way Odin might have treated the two of them, none of that excuses what Loki did. You don't get a free pass for murdering innocent people just because you didn't get enough hugs as a kid." She glanced sideways at Loki and then back to Tony. "He made his own choices."

"I never said it excused a thing," Tony said. "What, you think I'm just going to overlook everything he did? Because I haven't, and I haven't forgiven him for it, either." He pinned Loki with a look. "I sure as hell haven't forgotten Phil."

"No, of course not—"

"It isn't an excuse, but it's a hell of an explanation," he finished. "I mean, that's what we're here for, right? An explanation? The big glass statue over there was looking for Loki so She could tell him that ugly alien dude was dead. She didn't have to bring us here for that. She brought us here so we could hear Loki's side of the story. We're here for an explanation, and part of that explanation is that Odin was a shitty father."

"You, a mortal, have the audacity to sit there and baldly insult me?" Odin seemed like he couldn't decide whether or not to be pissed off or just contemptuously amused at this point, but Tony was happy to help make that decision for him.

"Oh, honey, you don't know me at all," he said, and smiled his paparazzi smile. "Tony Stark, genius, inventor, fan_tast_ically wealthy, Iron Man. And you have _no idea _what I have the audacity to do."

"I am the king of the Nine Realms—"

"But we're not your subjects." Tony leaned forward and propped one elbow on the table, drumming his gauntleted fingers like he didn't have a care in the world. He indicated the Norns' vessel with his chin. "She already reminded you of that, remember? You conquered Jotun-land and then turned your back and left them to starve. You've ignored _us_ for so long you're nothing but a bunch of _myths _to us. Old gods nobody even believes in anymore, except for a few New Age-y types and the occasional skinhead."

"After the war with Jotunheim, we chose to withdraw from the affairs of men."

"Then you don't get to have it both ways," said Tony. "If you're gonna call yourself our ruler, you gotta actually rule us. But if you're just gonna spend _hundreds _of years doing nothing but sit up here with your thumb up your ass, you don't get to suddenly turn around and call yourself the king of anything, the second someone says something you don't like."

"If you recall, Stark," Loki spoke up, a little calmer now finally, "the Norns have also already called Odin All-Father a hypocrite. For you to do so now is… gratifying, perhaps, but redundant." He turned to Widow and nodded. "And you are correct that my choices were, and are, my own. I am not here to present excuses, nor to pass the blame for my actions onto anyone else, nor to seek your forgiveness. Perhaps my upbringing did shape my ability to choose the correct path, as it shaped Thor's assumptions and sense of entitlement, but I was still the one to choose. What I did here, in Asgard, was what seemed to me at the time to be the best or sometimes the only option. That I was not entirely clearheaded in the face of crisis is my own failing. As you say, that is an explanation but does not erase the gravity of all I have done."

"What I do not understand," said Thor thoughtfully, "is the way you seem to alternate between showing remorse for your crimes, and reveling in their barbarity. You were imprisoned for what you did; remorse could have seen you released, in time. Yet I cannot tell whether you truly feel it."

"Fair enough," said Loki, pouring himself yet another cupful of mead. "Neither can I. I can only relay to you what I felt when all this first took place, and at that time, most of it was so overwhelming as to be incomprehensible. Impossible to pick apart and identify everything that was tumbling about, inside my head."

He took a quick breath in through his nose, pressing his lips together in thought. "The truth was revealed to me," he said finally. "At the worst possible time, given all the other events in motion, and in the worst possible way. For there was no reassurance to be had; I grew belligerent, as centuries of bottled up hurt and anger finally found a _reason _for the unequal treatment between me and my brother, and as I confronted the man I had believed to be my father, he collapsed into the Odinsleep."

"Right in front of you?" asked Thor, incredulous.

"On the steps of the vault itself," Loki replied.

"For the rest of the class… he fell asleep while you were yelling at him?" asked Tony.

"Odin is both king and a powerful seidmadr in his own right," explained Loki. "His age as well as the bonds between ruler and realm grant him a special sort of seidr, of magical energy, that we call the Odinforce. With it flowing through his veins, he can see and influence much of what occurs throughout the realm; it is how he knew when the Jotnar entered the vault, for example. The Odinforce does have its flaws, however; the relevant one here is that this power, while great, nevertheless places a strain upon his body that requires him to enter a trance state in order to rest, perhaps once every several years. This respite is known as the Odinsleep, and can last anywhere from a few days to a few weeks at a time. It must be entered deliberately, with preparation, lest the energies of the Odinforce overwhelm a weary mind and aging body, and cause him to die before waking."

"Father had been preparing for my coronation for some time," said Thor, "and had chosen to push back against his need for the Odinsleep for longer than he ought to have done. I remember that when he came to rescue us on Jotunheim, Laufey mocked him, saying that he looked weary. I can only assume that the strain of the day's events came to a head when Loki confronted him, and he was finally unable to resist the pull of the Odinsleep, and succumbed."

"Which in itself was also frightening," said Loki. "It is unsettling enough to see one's father helpless for days at a time, even when we have prepared for his rest; more so, for me at least, when it came upon him at a time when I most needed an anchor. Everything was being systematically ripped away from me, it seemed: our stability as a realm, as we faced a sudden war; my place, my very identity, as the truth of my heritage was exposed; my brother, possibly never to return; my fa—the man I called father, possibly never to awaken. The only person I had left to whom I might turn was my mother, and she…" He shut his eyes and took a long swallow of his mead.

"What could she possibly have done?" asked Thor.

"You recall what I said earlier, that she has ever taken on the role of apologist for Odin's actions, whether she agreed with them or not," replied Loki. "She said that she wanted hadn't to leave me unaware of my own blood, to lie to me as they had, but they did so anyway because they never wanted me to _feel different_." He chuckled sadly.

"Those words are the truth," said Odin.

"Then you must never have paid attention to my surroundings at all," said Loki. "Or else you preferred to spin a pleasant fiction to tell yourselves as well. I was _always_ different. And I never understood what I was doing _wrong. _Your lies never kept me from feeling like an outcast in this realm, they only kept me from understanding _why_, and from being able to do anything about it." He chuckled again, just the barest huff of air. "The only ones you succeeded in protecting were yourselves…" He looked away from Odin then, and caught Tony's eye. "And it was in that state of mental, emotional, and political upheaval that I was made king."

"You, uh, didn't steal it?" confirmed Bruce.

He shook his head. "The All-Father was incapacitated; his heir, the crown prince, was gone. Mother ought to have taken over as regent, but refused to be moved from her husband's side. That left me, according to the official line of succession. The speaker for the council of elders brought Gungnir—the spear you see in Odin's hand, the symbol of his office—brought it into the very chamber where Odin lay, and knelt, and presented it to me. I remember that I looked over my shoulder at Frigga and she said, 'Make your father proud, _my king._'"

Tony winced with a hiss. Bad move, on her part. "No pressure."

Loki inclined his head. "Perhaps she meant it as a show of her faith, that even though her foundling son was a Jotun, she still trusted him with the safety of the realm. But at the time… it was only another weight upon my shoulders. It felt like a sick joke, to hand the scepter to a _Frost Giant _and tell it to _make Odin proud_." He shook his head. "Then again, it felt like a tremendous opportunity; I had this sense that perhaps _this time _Father would see what I was capable of, and look upon me with favor. Without Thor there to overshadow my accomplishments, perhaps _this _would be enough." Again, he shook his head, this time with an expression of disgust painting his face. "Such a young and foolish little pet I was. To make it worse, she revealed to me that there was a possibility Thor might be able to return. She reminded me of what I already knew, that there is a purpose to everything Odin does. Thor's banishment was not permanent; he must face a test, a trial of some unknown nature, and if he passed it he would be able to return.

"So many different objectives lay spread before me in that moment, it was difficult to reconcile them, and I don't know that I could have done so even in a more rational frame of mind. Once again, I faced the burden of cleaning up after Thor's mess, this time with the whole of Asgard watching. I needed to rule, and rule well, while my father slept; needed to prove myself. And I had to do it all before Thor could solve Odin's little puzzle and return, and cast me back into obscurity." Loki sighed, and drank. "On a less political note, part of me needed Thor to return so that I would not have to face all this alone, but at the same time I did not believe I would be able to trust my brother with any of what I had learned, that he would scorn me as a monster and that his rejection, on top of everything else, would break me. On a _more_ political note, I needed Thor to remain on Midgard long enough not to aggravate what was already an extremely sensitive political situation. All this, while struggling with the inescapable fact that my brother was not truly my brother and never had been."

"So what did you do?" Steve prompted.

"I was pondering how best to manage Jotunheim," Loki replied, "when the Warriors Three, and the lady Sif—Thor's friends, his toadying lackeys—trooped into the throne room, _demanding_ of the All-Father that he lift the banishment and return their precious playmate to them. They were most surprised when they finally looked up from their little tirade and realized that it was not Odin seated upon Hlidskjalf, but me." He smiled bitterly, and once again reached for the bottles in front of him. "I told them the truth: I could not permit my first edict as king to overrule Odin's final one before the Odinsleep. In any case, even if I were to lift the banishment I did not have the authority, nor the ability, to restore Thor's powers. What would be the point of bringing him home as a helpless mortal, surrounded by Aesir?" His eyes narrowed in disgust, and he threw back his drink and downed it in two gulps. "They did not accept that. In fact, Sif behaved as if my position was some sort of prank, and moved to threaten me. Apparently the word of a king is easily ignored, when one is accustomed to romping after the crown prince and acting with impunity for centuries. Apparently the kingship is a joke, and need not be respected, when one simply does not _like _the one who holds the throne."

"I never knew this," said Thor.

"In your defense, I was not around to recount the tale," said Loki; Thor flinched, and Loki subsided, grimacing a little in sympathy. "They say Odin is able to see and hear while in his trance, and surely Heimdall had his eye upon the treacherous cuckoo, sitting in a chair that was too big for him and above his station. I wonder that neither of them looked into my reign to see what went wrong while I was thought dead. Or perhaps they did, and simply found no fault with what your little followers did."

Thor looked uncomfortable over Loki's words, but didn't say anything in response. He did, however, risk a look at Odin at the other end of the table, who simply sat there as inscrutable as always, as if he really thought none of this could touch him. Whatever; Tony had dealt with plenty of pompous assholes in his lifetime and this guy wasn't even breaking new ground on that front.

"I forbade them to go," said Loki; "forbade Heimdall to open the Bifrost. They took less than two hours to defy me. I had done nothing wrong at this point—"

"Except for the thing with the Jotnar in the vault," interrupted Tony. Loki leveled a mild glare at him, but still answered him.

"_As king_, I had done nothing wrong. I had tried to uphold the edicts of the All-Father in his absence. _As king_, it was my prerogative to forbid them to leave, and in a time of war it was prudent to do so, even if my main reason was to prevent Thor's return. But even that had political motivations; Thor with his powers returned could only upset a delicate balancing act that I hoped to engage with Laufey, and Thor _without_ his powers returned would be a liability and a weakness, too easy to kill or take as a hostage if we should descend into actual warfare with the Jotnar." Loki began to snarl again, all the liquor he'd been tossing back either making him more volatile than usual, or else just letting them see how volatile he already was. "_As king,_ my orders ought to have been obeyed without _question,_ but Heimdall permitted them to come for you on Midgard. The power invested in Hlidskjalf and Gungnir showed me that he neatly sidestepped the command not to open the Bifrost for them, by opening it before they arrived and then turning his back while they used it. _Childish, petty, disobedient._ Tell me, All-Father, have you ever ordered your unruly servant _whipped_ for his insubordination? He _ought_ to have been."

"He did what he thought was best for Asgard."

"He _defied his king_, the rightful regent in your absence, because he did not _feel like_ obeying my commands. Would you be so forgiving if it had been _Thor_ on the throne, and he had disobeyed in such a manner? Heimdall defied _you _by allowing those useless fools to attempt to bring Thor home, and if we had actually been at war he would have been guilty of aiding and abetting _desertion_ by four warriors who liked to boast of themselves _constantly _that they were great and mighty Aesir _heroes."_

Thor's eyes grew wide, and to Tony's everlasting satisfaction, even Odin looked a little taken aback.

"Let me guess," said Tony, "Loki's right and you're only just now realizing it."

The Norns' vessel stepped forward then, Her gaze steady as she faced down the All-Father. "Now you begin to see, Deceiver, why we value him so. You knew him from infancy; it should not have taken so long for you to understand."

* * *

><p><strong>I've had a couple people ask when we would get to the point that the Norns brought the Avengers there to hear. We're... sort of in the middle of that, especially in this chapter. I'm sorry if things seem to be dragging.<strong>

**As always, thank you for reading!**


	10. Chapter 10

Odin had that weird, almost-warm look on his face again, the one he got whenever it looked like maybe Loki had done something Odin had wanted or hoped for him to do. The one that almost looked like he could maybe be an actual father, after all.

Loki glared at Odin, and it surprised Tony to see how in that moment the wounded pouting teenager was entirely absent, and the person sitting there instead was every inch a ruler. "In fact, by Laufey's own words, we _were _at war. One of my tasks was to prepare Asgard for imminent attack in retaliation for Thor's little escapade. But the _Warriors Four," _he spat the words, "placed a higher priority on their friendship with Thor than they did on the oaths they had sworn to their realm. Perhaps they were hoping to dodge responsibility for their actions as well. Instead they only compounded them."

"The penalty for desertion is death, Loki," said Thor worriedly. "Or else mortality and exile, which amounts to the same thing on a slower time scale. Surely, you cannot mean that you wish them dead, they who accompanied us on our travels for most of our lives…"

"They accompanied _you,_ Thor," Loki reminded him. "They were never the friends to me that they were to you, even when I still was naïve enough to wish it were otherwise. For your sake I might not wish them dead, but for their own actions, you cannot deny that at the very least they deserve to be publicly flogged until their blood stains the cobblestones."

"Nice image," said Tony. Yeah, okay, he wasn't ashamed to admit that this whole bloodthirsty vibe was making him uncomfortable. If the Norns loved Loki so much, why weren't they saying anything about the more, oh, _insane_ aspects of his personality?

"What happened next?" prompted Steve, and Tony shot him a grateful look.

"In my desperation and anger, I began to go a little mad," said Loki with a tiny smile on his face. Yeah. Insane. "It occurred to me that even the most fanatically loyal Aesir still would not turn away from Thor long enough to do more than pay lip service to me. Not even the kingship was enough to win their respect. No one was even interested in giving me a chance to see what I could do."

"Hell of a pout you've got there," said Natasha, and Loki just gave her a _look. _

"I began to cast about for a way to truly earn my so-called father's favor," he said as if she hadn't interrupted, "and I found one. Thor was banished for starting a war. What if I could end it? What if I could do so without any Aesir losses, and what if I could do it in such a way as to prove to Odin that I was truly his son? Further, since it was clear I would not have any assistance from those whose oaths to serve Asgard apparently meant nothing, what if I could do so _singlehandedly_?" He made a little face and reached for the purple liqueur again. "As I said at the beginning of this sordid little tale, the motivations seemed perfectly reasonable at the time. Honorable, even. The choices I made, poor though they were in hindsight, seemed like the best and sometimes only options available to me."

"Okay, so what did you choose?" Bruce asked, with the _okay-I'll-bite _air of a man filling an expected role.

"I returned to Jotunheim, in secret, and spoke to their king. My blood father, as I'd only recently learned. I offered him a temptation; he could come to Asgard himself and slay the All-Father while he was… indisposed. With his opposition dead, he could reclaim the Casket of Ancient Winters for himself, and restore his kingdom to its former glory." Fill the cup, toss the drink back, give that full-body shudder. "I remember at the time laughing internally at the idiotic savages and looking around at the ruins of their kingdom with contempt. How could they not suspect a trap? And who knows, perhaps Laufey did. Perhaps he thought the risk was worth the reward. Had I known then what the Casket truly was…" He trailed off, and for a moment Tony thought he looked… sad. Genuinely remorseful.

"Upon my return I spoke to Heimdall and asked him to make sure no one used the Bifrost." He rubbed his forehead. "Forgive me, it's been some time and I am greatly enjoying the effects of my drink. I may have recounted the sequence of events inaccurately." He shook himself, poured another double of the nasty cough syrup stuff. "No matter. I spoke with Heimdall. I gave the command. I was within my rights as king to order such, and I had legitimate reasons for doing so. It was not the Gatekeeper's place to question those commands, nor to second-guess either the commands or my reasons for them, nor to creatively interpret them to suit his own ends. And yet he did so, and set all my plans at risk." He downed another cupful, shuddered. "Do you hear me, good Heimdall? You knew what I was for longer than I did, was that why you despised me so? Even when I had done nothing to deserve it?"

"Keep going," said Steve, and Loki sneered at him.

"Do shut up, soldier," he replied, and Thor elbowed him.

"No offense, but you're headed toward rambling drunk land again," said Tony. "Shouldn't that bottle be close to empty by now?"

"Not this one," said Loki, "it's enchanted. I enchanted it. When I was not yet an adolescent, as you measure such things."

"No kidding?"

"I'm quite proud of it," Loki replied, "my voice had not yet changed and for my skill level it was a fairly complicated working. Half my tutors were not even capable of the things I could do at that age."

"Topic, brother," said Thor resignedly.

"Ah yes. Thank you, brother." He poured and drank another round, and Tony was starting to worry at just how quickly he was pounding them down. The only times Tony wanted to get that hammered that quickly was when he was trying to drown unpleasant memories.

"Trap neatly laid. Bifrost closed, only not, because those miserable, sniveling whores to Thor's greatness merrily deserted Asgard and trooped down to Midgard, to find my brother and drag him back to where he would be of no use whatever. Measures needed to be taken."

Thor sighed. "The Destroyer?" he asked.

"The Destroyer."

"Was that the giant robot thing that started blowing everything up?" asked Hawkeye.

"It was," said Loki, and damn. Tony had gotten a look at the reports SHIELD had on the thing, and it wasn't pretty.

"Here, Lady Widow, is another of those perfectly reasonable yet ultimately very poor choices. Does it not amuse you?"

"You're telling me sending that thing down to Earth was reasonable?"

Loki shrugged. "In case it escaped your notice, apart from Thor's recently-acquired fondness, Asgard cares nothing for Midgard. You are perceived as a backward little world inhabited by a backward little race. You're intelligent enough, but you barely live long enough to do anything with that intelligence. You're… cute. Almost like people, but not quite."

"Nice," glared Hawkeye, and Loki smiled at him.

"Your world makes for a perfectly safe dumping ground for Asgard's problem children, and a playground for Asgard's more beloved children," he said. "Remember, we've ignored you for centuries. Asgard may not bear any hostility toward you, but by the same token, what would we care about your wellbeing?"

"A true king is sworn to protect the Nine Realms," said Odin archly.

"I've seen your _protection_," Loki scoffed. "Don't act as though you've any ground to stand on." He tipped his head back and swallowed more purple booze, then turned back to Natasha. "Would I do things differently now? Yes, probably. Did I intend to slaughter your people then? No. In fact I gave the Destroyer no commands whatsoever regarding the mortals. My exact words: 'See to it that Thor does not return. Destroy everything.'"

"Still not seeing the reasonable part," said the captain harshly.

"From Hlidskjalf—sorry, that's the name of the throne itself, it's imbued with magic, you see, practically everything in Asgard is, really—from Hlidskjalf, I could see through the Destroyer's eyes and prevent it from doing any real harm. A few Midgarder hovels were destroyed," he said, waving a hand dismissively. "Thor's friends were sufficiently distracted; Thor's mortals were fleeing and taking him along, because he recognized that he was mortal and _useless_—" he bared his teeth for a second, before it morphed into a nostalgic smile. "That was a heady feeling, I will admit. A chance to bang out a few of my frustrations on the handful of people who _truly _deserved it, without my precious brother involving himself."

"Except I did involve myself," said Thor.

"Yes. You did. Even an entire realm away you were still capable of disrupting very carefully laid plans."

"You killed your own brother," said Hawkeye, and oh look, the talkative drunk showed his teeth again.

"I _never _intended for that to happen," he snarled. "I underestimated just how utterly _weak_ your people truly are, how weak the All-Father's punishment had made Thor. If I had wanted him dead I would have incinerated him. He came up and interfered in a highly satisfying battle, all covered in the trappings of humility, still ignorant of his wrongdoings against me. Attempting to apologize without even knowing what he had done. _Centuries_, I had spent, trying to get him to pay attention to the consequences of his actions, to stop being such an arrogant little _brat,_ and in two days some _human _was able to get him to listen where I had failed—" Loki flung his cup away, and it bounced and clattered across the stone floor and out onto the balcony, as he reached for the bottle and clutched it in his fist.

"He was my brother, complicated though the term had suddenly become, and I did love him then as I love him now. Nevertheless. His actions still deserved a good slap to the back of his head, and that was what I gave him, through the Destroyer. It wasn't supposed to even hurt him." He slumped back in his seat and groped unsteadily for Thor's shoulder, as if reassuring himself the big guy was still there. "Instead it broke his neck." He tipped the bottle up and Tony heard the liquor inside slosh about as Loki took three huge gulps. His shudder that time was so powerful it knocked a couple of tears loose from his eyes. "It seemed like a good idea at the time."

Thor said nothing at first, just reached for his brother and pulled him close. Loki allowed it, and slumped against him while taking another pull straight from the bottle.

"Failed. Failed, failing, failure," he said quietly.

"Your tale is nearly finished, brother," said Thor.

"There was a tiny part of my mind that thought, _Good. Now he can't interfere_," Loki said, his voice rasping. His eyes were fixed on the table, staring at nothing, with a desolate expression on his face. "And the rest of me _broke_ to hear it. Everything I had feared since learning I was not Aesir was coming true. People I had trusted with my life in battle had turned their backs on me. I had killed my own brother, and a part of me was _pleased_. It was becoming clearer and clearer to me thatI wasn't even a real person, I was only some Jotun monster. When it turned out that Thor had survived, all I could think was that if he came home he would _ruin _the trap I'd set for Laufey." Another tear slid down his cheek. "Monster, monster, beast, filth."

"You are my brother."

"You are a fool." Loki shut his eyes for a second. "I needed to hurry. I had planned to bring the Jotnar by the secret paths, but there was no time for that, and in the long term it was best if they did not learn those pathways for themselves. I needed to use the Bifrost, and I needed to punish Heimdall for his disobedience." He slugged back another swallow of the drink, only this time he didn't shudder.

"I spoke with Heimdall, though at this particular moment I no longer remember exactly what was said. Something about him defying his king. Some self-righteous backtalk from him, naturally. I remember telling him that for his actions he was no longer a citizen of Asgard and that he was to be banished, and in response…" He laughed. "How ironic, Heimdall, that you would choose _that _moment to adhere to the letter of the law, you _hateful _old man. In response he declared that since he was no longer a citizen of Asgard he was free to attack me, and he did."

"How did you defend yourself against him?" asked Thor gently.

"Froze him. In ice. With the Casket. Turned all thick-skinned and demon-eyed, right in front of him, because what did it matter? Revealing myself to a man who had despised me since I was a child, because he knew what I was even when I did not. Wasn't like it was a secret to him. Only to me."

"And then what happened?"

Loki sat up. "Don't treat me as though I'm some fragile little child who needs to be guided to the end of this tale."

"Don't pretend this is not painful for you to recall."

"As I am currently reliving all of it in excruciating detail, in front of an audience of people who despise me, for the entertainment of the Three Sisters of Yggdrasil, I see no point in pretending anything."

"Fair enough," said Thor. "And then what happened?"

Loki slugged him on the arm. Took a drink from the bottle, but was apparently drunk enough that the shuddering had stopped. "Opened the Bifrost and let the giants in."

"Loki, surely you understand that this is treason," said Odin. "To allow the enemy into Asgard, in time of war…"

"_Odin_, surely you understand that the king cannot commit treason against himself," Loki drawled. "I've already told you, it was always my intention to slay Laufey. Cut off the head, and the claws cannot strike. Heimdall interfered. The Warriors Three and Sif interfered. Thor resurrecting himself and passing your little test interfered, since it meant I needed to rush."

"Never rush a miracle man, sonny," quoted Tony, "you get rotten miracles."

Loki snickered, but the sound was broken and sad. "Something like that." He sighed, and took another drink, and Tony winced. "Laufey went into Odin's chamber, and disarmed my mother when she moved to defend her husband. The king of the Jotnar, my sire by blood, leaned over the All-Father's helpless form and said that he hoped it was true, the stories that say Odin can see and hear everything even when he's in his trance. Because he wanted Odin to know his death came at the hand of Laufey. And he created an ice dagger, and raised it high above his head… and I fired upon him with Gungnir. I said to him, _And yours came at the hand of a son of Odin,_ and I fired again and killed him."

Loki slumped back against Thor's side again, resting his head on his brother's shoulder. "Which officially makes me a kinslayer, even though my _kin_ intended for me to die first, long ago, as an infant. Or so I believed at the time. It was all right, though. It was beautiful theater, after all, and besides, what else could you expect from a Jotun monster, but to slay his own blood?"

He said nothing for a long moment, just leaned against Thor and stared off into space all bleary-eyed and sad, until finally Odin broke the silence. "Thor returned shortly thereafter, did he not?"

"Practically in the same moment," said Loki. "That spiteful, petty door-guard of yours managed to break free of the ice encasing his body, slew the two Jotnar who were guarding the Bifrost, and opened it to retrieve Thor and his followers. I'd killed Laufey, and that ought to have been the end of it." He grinned lopsidedly, hoisting the bottle high. "But then, the failed coronation and Thor's little tantrum ought to have been the end of it; returning from Jotunheim the first time ought to have been the end of it. _Everything _ought to have been the end of it, but the false son, the _Jotun pet _masquerading as an Aesir prince, made a ruin of everything he touched.

"Laufey was dead. My mother had run to me, and for a brief, shining moment I was the _savior of Asgard_, her beloved son, heroic and brave… and while she still held me in her arms, Thor came storming into the room, Mjolnir in hand, absolutely furious with me, and it all came crashing down like the poorly crafted illusion it really was."

"He was angry about the Destroyer?" asked the captain.

Loki lifted the bottle to his lips again, although he didn't immediately take a drink; the motion was more languid and heavy than it had been. "He was angry because, in an effort to discourage him from satisfying Odin's criteria and ending his banishment, I had told him that Odin was dead, that our continued peace with the Jotnar was contingent upon his remaining on Midgard forever, that Mother didn't wish to see him…"

"Jesus, you deliberately crushed him, didn't you?"

"I admit that seeing the perfect, golden son _finally _brought low—finally _understanding_ what it was to be outcast, friendless and alone, unwanted, _blamed _for all misfortune, finally not the perfect one whom all adored whether he deserved it or not—yes, I admit that that desire motivated me as well. It was good for him. Built _character_." He shrugged fluidly and took another swallow, then licked the purple off his lips. "I would never have discovered the hideous truth if it had not been for him; would have continued believing myself a member of Asgard's royal family and not a deformed abomination, if he hadn't gotten it into his head to go marching off and inciting war with the Jotnar. So yes. I hated and blamed him, and wanted to make him _hurt _as I had hurt."

"Pretty dick move," said Barton.

"I never claimed it wasn't," said Loki.

"I get the feeling we're almost to the end of this story," said Natasha, and Loki smiled.

"Oh no. Not really. Perhaps two thirds of the way in. Or perhaps this was all a long and painfully drawn out introduction to the real tale. You will be the judge when all is said, my lady." Loki shoved himself more or less upright; he looked at the bottle still clutched in his hand, then set it on the table with exaggerated care. "I had managed for about five seconds to deny my blood and prove I was still worthy of Asgard's gilded halls, and then Thor returned and _he _was the conquering hero and I was merely a deceitful Frost Giant savage. I was almost completely out of my head by that point, and I decided that there was nothing left but to walk away, refuse to face Thor, and take one last solution to erasing everything that I so desperately did not wish to be."

Thor shut his eyes and drew one hand across his forehead, and Tony got a really bad feeling.

"The Bifrost, do you remember how I described it as a kind of anchored vortex, one that sucks in its passengers and flings them elsewhere?"

"Yeah…" said Bruce.

Loki nodded. He propped one elbow on the table and cupped his chin in his hand, while his free hand played around tracing the curves of the two bottles of liquor in front of him. "Well. It turns out that the Bifrost cannot be left open for long periods of time, or it will act more like a drill bit, or an awl, and _punch _right through the very bedrock of the destination planet. Leave it open long enough and you just might destroy that planet entirely. It's not just a speedy means of travel, it's a terrific weapon, too. I think you mortals call that multi-tasking, do you not? Or versatile. Yes. The Bifrost is _versatile_."

Tony heard the little gasp from Steve's end of the table, but he couldn't tear his eyes off Loki to acknowledge it. Everyone else seemed to be holding their breath; it was so quiet Tony could hear a crow calling outside, somewhere past the balcony.

"I thought…" Loki paused, then started again. "I thought it would be all right. Odin's father virtually exterminated the Svartalfar over the course of his reign; Fath—Odin had conquered and slaughtered his fair share and was regarded as a hero. He always tried to tell us that a king should not send his people to their deaths if it can ever be avoided, and here I was, _avoiding_ it. And anyway, they were," he gave another broken little laugh, "they were _only_ Jotnar." A tear broke loose and traced down his cheek, but Loki barely blinked. "And there was some mad, little voice in my head that insisted, I couldn't be _part_ of a race of monsters if the only _example_ of the race was me."

He swallowed thickly, heavily. Then he turned to the big glass statue, the one Tony had almost forgotten was there since She'd been so quiet all this time, and whispered, "_I am sorry._"

"We know, guardian," She replied.

"You shouldn't call me that," he said, shaking his head as more tears slipped across his face to drip from his jaw.

"So you…" Natasha cleared her throat. "You destroyed a planet?"

"No." He shook his head, reached for the purple liqueur, and stopped. His voice was desolate and empty as he continued. "No, Thor came out and tried to persuade me to stop. I provoked him into fighting me. He won, of course. He always wins. And he saved Jotunheim—the planet he'd gone to looking for a bloodbath, only two days prior—saved the Frost Giants by destroying the Bifrost. It was ancient, and beautiful, and it was supposed to be indestructible, but after I desecrated it, he destroyed it."

Thor said nothing, but he was blinking rapidly as his jaw clenched and unclenched. His eyes were red, while Loki's face despite the tears turned more and more pale.

"The destruction generated a massive explosion, and Thor and I were thrown high into the air and out over the abyss. The vortex, the tunnel between this world and that, was unanchored; this will be important to remember. We were falling towards it, about to be sucked into the maelstrom, when Odin appeared out of nowhere and caught Thor by his ankle. He woke from his Odinsleep just in the nick of time, or perhaps he forced himself to wake once he saw that Thor was in danger. Convenient, the timing he has for appearing and disappearing when he is most needed."

Tony glanced at Odin out of the corner of his eye; the old king looked like he was itching to say something, but he also looked—huh. Tony would swear he actually also looked almost as sad and upset as Thor did.

Loki noticed none of this, still talking in that hollow, dead voice. "And Thor was holding one end of Gungnir, which I had been wielding in our battle and which was used to activate the Bifrost, while I was holding the other end, by one hand. I looked up, into the face of the man I'd always called father, had always _loved _as a father, and tried to explain my actions. Tried to tell him that everything I had done, I'd done for Asgard, and for him. To prove myself worthy of _him_. And he said..." He glanced up, face drawn and sickly. "What did you say, All-Father? Tell them. Tell the mortals what you said to me, to the one you kept trying to insist was your son, while I was hanging by one hand over an abyss both physical and psychic."

"Loki," said Thor lowly, "brother, please, don't do this—"

"_Tell them!_" It was practically a scream and it echoed in the room, backed by a shockwave of green energy that made all of them jump. Tony wasn't sure he'd ever heard so much anguish in one person's tone before. Though he was pretty sure he'd seen it behind his own eyes, when he looked into the mirror some nights.

Odin shut his eye, and damn if his voice didn't quiver just the slightest bit. "I said, 'No, Loki.'"

At the other end of the table, Loki began to laugh, hoarse and half-sobbing. "'No, Loki.' Despite everything I'd done for him. Despite all my best, most noble intentions. Despite centuries of trying to please him, to protect Thor, to be a good son, to clean up after _everyone_ else's messes. 'No, Loki.'" His laughter quieted as he said simply, "And that was when I knew. When it finally sank in that I was not, never had been, and never would be his son. I would never be _enough. _I had been so foolish, so _stupid! _But now, I finally understood, and so I…"

"Brother," said Thor, burying his face in his hands.

"…I let go."


	11. Chapter 11

"Does that not delight you, Agent Barton?" Loki asked, looking down the table with bleary eyes. "To know that your tormentor was so weak, so cowardly, that he chose to die rather than face the consequences of his actions?"

Tony glanced down the table, but it looked like Barton was actually keeping his mouth shut for once. He still looked like he _wanted _to say something, definitely, but for whatever reason he was deciding to keep it to himself.

"What about you, Agent Romanov, hm? Captain? Does it please you to see how very _small _your hated enemy truly was?"

"Brother, stop, I beg of you."

Loki didn't acknowledge Thor's words, didn't even look at him, but he did stop talking to stare at Odin, a weary little half-smile playing across his face. "How convenient it must have been for you, All-Father; the unruly pet you'd brought home for Thor to play with had proven too difficult to control, but you were spared the trouble of doing away with it yourself. How disappointed you must have been when you found out I wasn't dead after—"

"That is enough," said Odin, everything about him calm, cold. Remote, distant. Son of a bitch didn't look like he even cared enough to be angry. "You have already crafted a fine story for yourself—"

"Oh, no, All-Father, ask the Norns themselves. I lie far less than you would like to believe. I always have. And today, I have spoken only the truth, as I perceived it, and _I hope you choke on it_."

"You assign me all the blame for your actions!"

"I assign you the complete lack of empathy it would require to crush a desperate man when he needed you most." Loki's teeth flashed, but the motion was too swift and painful to be a real smile. "Never forget that I might have lived, might have climbed back to safety and stayed away from Midgard entirely, _might never have encountered the Titan_, if it had not been for _you_."

"Do you know nothing of the Odinsleep?" Odin demanded, glaring down the table at his would-be son. Not so remote now, Tony thought.

"You also seem to have forgotten that I recently guided you safely through a Sleep that lasted for nearly three months. I daresay I understand more of its workings than you do."

"Then I suppose you know all about the _difficulties_ that arise in dragging oneself into wakefulness before the proper time!"

Loki blinked at him, drunk as a skunk, but Tony thought he was maybe in that skeptical _this-ought-to-be-good _kind of place, given the way his eyebrows rose.

"I could barely walk," said Odin, "and it was only through sheer will and seidr that I was able to reach you and Thor in time to prevent you both from being sucked into the vortex _you _created. What makes you think I was capable of speech? My voice was stilled, my tongue as a stone within my mouth. I said to you 'No, Loki,' because that was all I _could _say."

Loki blinked for a moment, trying to hide his surprise and not exactly succeeding, before he mustered up a smooth, condescending smile. "Ah, so you blame me for misinterpreting you, as well." He reached for the bottle and dragged it towards him. How the man wasn't slurring and half-conscious by now, Tony had no idea. "_You_ didn't drive me to suicide, _you _are absolved of all wrongdoing. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised by this. Like father, like son, after all."

"You fell and I nearly dropped your brother in my horror and grief!" Odin pounded his fist on the table before pointing at Loki with the Finger of Doom. "You chose to let go and _die,_ before my very eyes, and after I dragged Thor back onto the remains of the bridge, I nearly collapsed a second time! Once we had returned to the palace, I _did _collapse. It was a full thirteen days before I could wake again."

"And I suppose that is my fault as well, that Frigga and Thor were left to mourn _alone,_ while you surrendered to oblivion yet again."

"_Stop! Twisting my words!"_

"Stop speaking self-exonerating lies," Loki sneered flatly.

"No, that'd be you," muttered Barton, and Loki just looked at him blankly for the longest time, before beginning to laugh, low and mad and _oh shit,_ Tony still had flashbacks about that sound. After one last gulp of the nasty purple booze, Loki pulled away from Thor and got to his feet in one smooth motion, as Thor looked at him in startlement. Gold light glimmered across Loki's body, and just like that, instead of a prison uniform he was wearing a snazzy black and green suit with long coat and high boots. Definitely not Earth fashion, but not quite like he'd been wearing the last time they'd met, either. Tony wasn't sure if the effect was less intimidating, or more so, because of the way he swayed back and forth ever so slightly as he stood.

With a gesture, the crystal treasure chest reappeared in Loki's hands, and the blue began creeping back up across his skin. Odin pulled himself to his feet, reaching for his spear, and Tony saw Natasha pull a knife out of wherever the hell she hid them. Loki, however, didn't even look at the rest of them. His red eyes were only for Thor, who Tony couldn't help but notice _hadn't _immediately assumed his brother was about to go on a rampage, and for the big glass statue still standing to one side of the room.

"If you will pardon me, illustrious ladies," he said formally, "I believe I told you this would happen; I have humiliated myself, at your request, to no avail whatsoever. Now I grow weary of present company, and I also find that there is a matter before me which must be addressed before we may continue. Would you mind terribly if I were to absent myself for but a moment?"

"Brother, you are drunk," said Thor, a mix of amusement and concern on his face.

"Yes, I am. Spectacularly so. What of it?"

"Is it really safe for you to perform sorcery when you have been drinking?"

"Brother, I quite assure you, I could sky walk in my slee—"

"You mean to tell me that your title of Sky Walker was not youthful exaggeration?" asked Odin.

"At some point, I have every faith that you will eventually catch on that no one here is talking to you, All-Father." Thor looked appalled; Odin looked appalled with a side of outraged. Loki dismissed both as he turned back to his brother. "As I was saying, you need not fear. Sky walking is not the same as sorcery. It is to me what calling the storm is to you. It is child's play. Even bringing another with me will be no trouble whatsoever."

For a second, Big Thunder looked like he wanted to argue, but Tony could see the moment when the words _let it go _passed through his brain. "And you truly don't intend to be gone long?" he asked.

Those red eyes looked down again, and Loki's expression softened. "With luck, less than an hour," he replied. "Perhaps no more than a few minutes. But I swear, I will return, if only for your sake."

"And why do you not wish to take me with you?"

"To the mortals here assembled, you are the only friendly face in the whole of Asgard," said Loki. "Would you really leave them here to fend for themselves while Odin is in a _snit?_"

"I will not allow—" Odin began, but Loki rolled his eyes—which looked really weird now that his eyes didn't look human—and grumbled, "Oh, shut up," as he made a little flinging gesture with his hand. A bundle of fabric and fur appeared on the table in front of Black Widow. She glanced at it in a little flicker of her eyes, just long enough to make sure it wasn't going to attack her, before frowning at Loki.

"I am given to understand that the part of your world where you originally grew up is quite cold, is that not so?" He bowed courteously to her, the effect spoiled by the way he staggered off-balance for a second. He grinned, and Tony was startled to see that even his teeth were different in this shape. Pointier, mostly. "You can be my _chaperone_."

"Is this your idea of flirting?" she asked, eyebrow raised.

"This is my idea of finding someone to accompany me who will observe without missing important details, report to her comrades without bias, and above all will be capable of keeping her mouth shut so she doesn't get us both killed." He tipped his head lazily to look over at Tony. "If it weren't for that last consideration, I'd think about bringing you, Stark."

Tony was crushed. Really. Well, okay, actually he might have been a little disappointed. "If you're bringing back souvenirs, see if you can find me whatever they drink in Frost Giant Land," he shot back.

"I'm pretty sure they mainly drink glacial meltwater, but I'll try my best." He looked back at Natasha, amused. "You've already proven you can see through my deceptions. Go on, put on the cloak. We're going on a _trip_ together. It'll be _fun_."

"Or it'll be a way to separate me from the rest of my team and eliminate me as a threat," she countered, then smiled. "After all, we've already proven I can see through your deceptions."

Loki still looked amused, but he gave an exaggerated sigh. "_I swear_, upon my _seidr,_ and upon the Three Sisters _themselves_, that for the duration of this specific journey, if any harm befalls you through my deliberate action _or inaction_, the Norns may _rip_ my magic from my very soul and throw me into the deepest darkest pits of Niflheim, there to rot, unlamented, for all eternity." He made a complicated little gesture in the air with one hand, and left a bit of glowing green light hanging in the air for a second before it faded. Tony thought maybe it looked like some kind of writing. "So swear I, Loki of Asgard. There. Are you satisfied?"

Thor looked a little like he'd swallowed a live goldfish. "Lady Romanov," he said, choking a little, "my brother has sworn upon his seidr only twice in his entire lifetime, before today. The first time, he averted a war, by identifying and empowering the rightful ruler of Alfheim in the face of those who sought to replace her with an impostor and usurp her power for themselves; the second time, he took upon himself a horrific punishment that had been intended for me, and which nearly killed him, rather than break his oath and endanger me."

"God of Lies," said Barton, and Tony kinda wanted to smack him.

"God of _Deceit_," corrected Loki, "there's a difference. It is true I don't make oaths often. But the ones I make, I keep. Can you say the same?" He smiled at Barton, all too knowing, and Tony decided, no, he'd kinda like to smack Loki instead.

Tasha did pick up the cloak and put it on, though. Bruce looked at her like he thought maybe she was a little nuts, and Cap was sputtering, but Odin cut him off before he could really get going.

"Where do you intend to go," he asked, and his voice hardened, "and what makes you believe I will permit you to do so?"

Loki turned to him and bared his teeth in a false smile. "Jotunheim, obviously, and what makes you believe I require your permission?"

"I will not—" Odin began, but Loki merely stepped back from the table, turned to the left, and vanished. Clint dropped a sudden f-bomb, and Tony turned to see that Natasha was gone, too. Huh. Well, then.

The humans and Thor all kind of blinked at each other for a few seconds, until Tony slapped an armored hand on the table and stood up.

"So, snack break?"

* * *

><p>"What's our assessment of Loki's story?" asked Steve, once they'd all gotten over being flabbergasted and actually gotten up, stretched their legs, all that good stuff.<p>

"He's full of shit."

"Says Legolas, to absolutely no one's surprise," filled in Tony. He reached across the buffet table for another little meat pie thing.

"Guys, enough," said Cap. "Bruce?"

"Ah, wow," said the good doctor. "I'm not the guy you wanna ask about that."

"Why not?"

Bruce sighed, scrubbed both hands over his face. "I can relate, partly? His story isn't complete yet? I mean, he admits to some pretty terrible stuff, but so far none of this has anything to do with New York, and the, uh, the Norns are implying pretty heavily—"

"Actually, no, they're pretty much stating outright—" said Tony.

"—that we don't have the full picture. That Loki's some kind of, I dunno, hero in disguise?" Bruce shook his head. "I'm not exactly spy material, you guys know that."

"No, but I am," grumbled Clint.

"No, you're a sniper," said Tony. Barton looked like he wanted to snap a reply, but Tony was being serious for once. "You kill people. That's your job, that's _literally_ what you get paid a boat-load of money to do. And I'm not judging, okay, hell I used to _supply _whole crowds of you people. There are times when it's necessary, I get it. But. From the outside, to someone who doesn't know what's going on, all they'll know is that you kill people, from a distance, with no warning, and you don't even tell anybody why."

"You're suggesting we're looking at this from the outside?" asked Steve.

"I know we are," shrugged Tony, taking a bite into his snack, "we've only had that pointed out to us about a dozen times since we've been here. The only real question is whether or not the inside perspective will justify any of what happened."

"The, uh, Norns seem pretty sure that it will," said Bruce.

"The Norns are biased," muttered Clint.

"_You're_ biased," said Tony without missing a beat.

"Is there a reason that sounded like 'so's your mom'?"

"So's your face."

Hawkeye smacked him upside the head, and Tony grinned.

"It has occurred to me before," said Thor as he joined them, "that my brother may have been playing a role while he enacted a deeper scheme, whose surface was all we could see. The outside perspective, as friend Tony puts it. But I could never guess at what that scheme might be."

"Thanos is part of it," said Bruce. He and Tony shared a look; Tony was pretty sure they'd both mostly worked out the gist of it. "The Norns weren't exactly being subtle."

"They really don't like Odin, that's for sure," acknowledged Steve.

"Well, no, and neither do I," said Tony.

"Speaking of bias," Barton rolled his eyes. "Don't think anybody here has missed the parallels between you and the _other _Poor Little Rich Kid, Stark. You're _this _close to becoming BFFs with the psycho who tried to take over the world."

"Okay, A, we don't actually know that the psycho did try to take over the world, if he's really playing some kind of deeper game here. B, if you're trying to get under my skin by bringing up my personal issues, you're going to have to work a little harder than that, circus boy. And finally, C, no, I don't like Odin, because Odin's the guy who essentially wound Loki up like a little plastic duck and then turned him loose on the rest of us."

"Loki made his own choices."

"And Odin supplied him with the motivation." Tony turned to look and they all followed his gaze to where the old man stood, out on the balcony with his hands clasped behind his back, pondering whatever he and Thor had just been talking about as Big Glass Statue Lady stepped out to join him. "What kind of asshole raises a kid in a society that's completely bigoted against that kid's race, without doing anything to combat that bigotry _and _without giving the kid the tools he would need to cope with the discrimination he was gonna face, or even cope with the awareness of what he is? From what we've learned, they've been alive for literally hundreds of years, thousands maybe…" He looked to Thor for confirmation.

"Aye, my brother and I have each recently passed our first millennium."

"…and somehow it was just _never a good time _to bring up the fact that, 'oh, hey, you're adopted,' and maybe give the kid a little encouragement? How much effort would it have taken to throw in a 'but don't sweat it, because we picked you, it's your brother that we didn't have a choice in keeping'?"

Thor chuckled at the line, but his eyes were sad. Clearly he'd already had the same thought.

"Hell, for that matter, how hard would it have been to give the kid some kind of support network that wouldn't _fall apart_ in the span of an hour, whether he ever learned about his background or not? It's not like we've seen much of this place, we've been here less than a couple hours, even, but I get the _distinct _impression that Loki has always stuck out here, and his own dad didn't even bother to _try _to back him, or build him up, do anything that might have prevented him turning into the nutjob that he did."

Steve frowned, but didn't look like he was really going to argue the point. "Not that it isn't a good point, but let's get back on topic. What do we think of his story so far?"

Bruce shrugged. "Assuming the sequence of events is accurate…" he looked at Thor for confirmation.

"It is, so far as I know."

"Then, I hate to say it, but right up until he decided to blow up a planet, he hadn't really done anything wrong."

"You've gotta be kidding me," groused Clint. "You don't think telling Thor his parents were either dead or disowning him wasn't a dick move?"

"Okay, nothing criminal, then," insisted Bruce. "He didn't plan to become king, but it happened anyway. He did create a plan to stop the war, and while it was underhanded, it would have worked and it's not like our pals at SHIELD haven't planned an assassination or two. I'm assuming kings here have final authority in most matters, that it's not just a figurehead position, right?"

"That is correct," nodded Thor.

"So, trying to follow Odin's rule and keep Thor on earth was _completely_ reasonable, attempting to stop Thor's friends from going to fetch him was completely reasonable, deciding to levy a punishment on this gatekeeper guy for disobeying both Odin's and Loki's orders was also completely reasonable. But no matter what Loki did, everything either lined up against him timing-wise, or else no one was willing to even give him the benefit of the doubt and let him _do his job_ as king."

"Especially not these warrior clowns," said Tony. "I mean, maybe they don't think they can trust him any farther than they can throw him, but that sounds like a communication breakdown that's been around for a _really_ long time, and also from the sound of it, it's maybe only a little bit justified."

"The dragon thing." Clint crossed his arms and looked disgusted with himself for not automatically trashing the trickster. He sighed and went on, "Cleaning up after other people's mistakes, operating behind the scenes, and either refusing to explain his side of the story or else not being allowed to give it. He said he got his reputation as a lying scumbag based on whatever conclusions those guys would jump to."

"Guilty until proven innocent," agreed Bruce.

"Did those, uh, 'warriors three' that Loki was talking about—did they ever face repercussions for their part in all this?" asked Steve.

Thor blinked. "I… there was the shock of Loki's sudden death, and then we were all in mourning… I do not believe that they ever did."

"So your brother commits suicide and they get away without even a talking-to," said Tony. "Nice." He didn't really want to take Loki's side, but damn if he just couldn't help himself. "Really great friends you got there, big guy. And your dad, wow. Shitty father _and _a lousy excuse for a king."

"My father grieved for Loki's death!" growled Thor, clenching his jaw in offense.

"Funny way of showing it," remarked Tony. "And, you know, I notice you're _defending_ the guy who pushed his son to commit suicide."

Big Thunder flinched, but got even madder, and Bruce put on his uncomfortable face and backed up a step.

"Loki faced a perfect storm of bad events with bad timing, including the loss of _any_ kind of support from the people who were supposed to be his friends. I mean, they pretty much rubbed it in his _face_ just how much they didn't respect him," said Tony. "And the absolute cherry on top of the shit sundae was your dad, whose rejection was _also_ perfectly timed, I mean, if he _wanted _to off his son he couldn't have planned it better… and then in the aftermath, he doesn't even lift a finger to hold those other assholes accountable? Not even a little?" He shook his head.

"You're taking this awful personally," said Hawkeye, and Tony was grateful that he at least tried to dial back the antagonism.

He took a deep breath, blew it out his nose. Yeah. He probably ought to settle down a little. "I'm not fond of any storyline where the main character gets screwed over by the people he thought he could trust," he said, and left it at that. Turning back to Thor, he said, calmer now, "All I'm saying is, if I were in your shoes, I'd want to take a long, careful look at the people around me, and _thoroughly _pick apart their motivations, as well as I could. And I mean _especially _the people closest to you, like these friends of yours and your dad. Why are _these_ people your friends? What do _those_ people want? What's their angle? How much of your loyalty do they really deserve? And then, I'd make some decisions about who I was gonna stand beside, and start clearing out the deadwood."

He reached for another pie, but he didn't take his eyes off Thor. "Because from where I'm standing, it looks like you've got some priorities to examine. And if you really think that standing with Loki is the best thing to do, if he's really going to be a priority for you, then there're some other connections you're maybe going to have to cut."

* * *

><p><strong>I hadn't quite planned for the little conference between the menfolk while Loki and Natasha were gone, but they started talking and I thought they were being <em>kind of<em> interesting...**

**My thanks, as always, to all who have read, reviewed, followed, or faved. I really appreciate it. If you feel like spreading the love a little, I'd love it if you were to tell other people that this fic exists. I don't really play in the Avengers fandom, so I don't know where to put my work to give it a wider audience.**


	12. Chapter 12

Thor looked unhappy, although he at least seemed to be considering what Tony was trying to tell him. He opened his mouth to answer, but before he could, Tony was distracted by the smell of… was that curry?

Tony leaned back to look around Big Thunder's impressive bulk, and felt his eyebrows go up. "Hey guys," he said, more or less calmly.

Loki no longer looked like a stand-in for the _Avatar _movie, and he was no longer dressed like a leather fashion model, either. Instead he wore, of all things, actual blue jeans, faded and slightly scuffed, and a white button-down shirt under a comfy-looking brown leather jacket. His hair had been pulled back into a low tail with a couple curly wisps hanging loose around his face. He looked like a travel photographer or something.

The curry smell was probably coming from him, too, since he was cupping what looked like a banana leaf in one hand, and picking bits of food out with the other and eating them delicately.

Natasha was standing next to him, looking slightly annoyed but not actually ready to kill anybody. The furry winter cloak was gone, and now she was carrying a paper sack with… was that the Bergen Bagels logo?

"Where the hell did you guys go?" demanded Clint. Took the words right out of Tony's mouth.

"Jotunheim," said Loki, with an innocent smile that looked a damn sight better on him than anything Tony had seen him pull back on Earth.

"Uh-huh, and where the hell else?"

"A little village the inhabitants call Ban Mi," said Loki.

"_Thailand_," said Natasha.

"I think I speak for all of us here when I ask _why,"_ said Bruce.

"There is a place in Ban Mi, a little hut, right by the river," said Loki happily, "where an old woman makes the most exquisite fish, cooked in these exotic spices." He popped another bite in his mouth, sucked a bit of sauce off his fingertip. "You can't find them in any other realm."

"Curry," said Natasha.

"Again: why?"

"Because I wanted to," said Loki. "Because I was hungry, and prison fare is boring. Because it is unwise to drink so much on an empty stomach."

"Right, because eating curry when you're already drunk enough to hurl is a _great_ idea," muttered Tony.

"Because the old woman is very sweet and I like to visit her every few years," added Loki.

"Ah," grinned Thor, "is this the woman you've told me about, who looks Vanir, and always asks if you are married?"

"First she tells me I'm too thin, and kisses me on the cheek," corrected Loki, "and _then _she asks if I am married."

There was sort of a collective blink among the humans in the room, as they all tried to imagine the psycho who invaded New York being fussed over by a little Asian grandma.

"And the… bagels?" asked Steve.

"Well, obviously, Agent Romanov requested them," shrugged the psycho, collecting a bit of rice from his banana leaf. "And Stark did say he wanted a souvenir."

"From Jotunheim, dude."

"I have it on good authority that the food is tastier on Midgard."

"_Bozhe moy, vy khvastun_," Natasha rolled her eyes, and Loki did a horrible job of hiding a delighted little grin. "He said we should bring back _snacks _for the Avengers and asked if there was anything in particular that might be suitable. I said I didn't think he'd be interested in hunting down a bagel place in Thailand, he asked where bagels came from…" She sighed. "Two steps later, we're in New York."

There was so much in just those two sentences to process and be blown away by that Tony decided to just roll with it for now and let his brain explode later. In the meantime… "Did you remember to get the dill cream cheese?"

"_Yes_, Stark," said Natasha, dropping the sack on the table, "I remembered to get everybody's favorites. God."

"You have got to be kidding me," said Barton, but it didn't stop him from opening the bag and beginning to rummage through its contents.

"He's drunk off his ass, Clint," she replied, "what are you gonna do?"

Tony looked at Loki, then at the bag of bagels, and then thought about things like portals and nuclear missiles, and machines and rubidium, and full-tilt divas making a production out of everything. Then he combined that with what they'd learned so far about Loki and this Thanos guy… and _then _a whole lot of if-then statements suddenly began stacking in his head. One by one, pieces began falling into place, and Tony _got it._ Son of a bitch, he got it.

He almost blurted it out, too, except that he decided it would be a hell of a lot more fun, and probably wiser, to just kick back and let Loki confirm Tony's hypotheses, and watch the sparks fly.

"So you are, truly, Loki Sky Walker," said Odin, who had come in unnoticed while they were all getting their minds blown over an intergalactic bagel delivery. The Norns' vessel was standing behind him, light from the setting sun shining brilliant orange through Her body, and smiling at Loki. It was hard to read facial expressions on a big glass statue, but Tony thought She was amused over the whole thing.

"Adds a bit of context to the time I was away from Asgard, does it not?" asked Loki, and Odin looked _deeply _uncomfortable. Yep, Tony realized, things were starting to come clear for him, too. "But yes. As I said before we left: sky walking to me is as calling the storm is to Thor. More so, perhaps, since I doubt you could strip me of my powers the way you did him, unless you wanted me to die in agony." He crossed his legs and dropped neatly onto his cushion beside Thor, still picking at the curried fish as his jeans and jacket shimmered and transformed back into his Aesir getup. "A possibility I do not discount, in case you were wondering."

"Okay, but you did travel to Jotunheim first, right?" asked Steve, looking at Widow for confirmation.

"Well, it was somewhere overcast, dark, and with snow and ice as far as I could see," she said. "Whether it was actually Jotunheim… it's not like I have a map to tell the different worlds apart."

"It was," said the Norns, pacing regally back around the table to Her spot on the other side of the room. "We felt the guardian's steps along the branches of Yggdrasil."

Odin looked up then, and Thor seemed to tense. "What did you do there?" he asked his brother.

"What I always do," said Loki, less amused now and with more fatigue in his voice. "I cleaned up after someone else's mess."

"We, uh, came out near some ruins," said Widow, "although we didn't see them at first, we were on the other side of a small hill. Loki kept, uh… whispering to the Casket of Ancient Winters. Or maybe listening to it. Either way, he led us on maybe a five-minute walk, in the dark, straight to the ruins. There were these tall columns with steps leading up, but no roof. I thought it was missing or collapsed at first, but there wasn't any debris from that, just from the broken columns. Given the layout of the interior, I think it was some kind of open-air shrine or temple."

Steve and the others nodded; Odin went very still. Interesting.

"There wasn't anyone around as far as I could tell, although I did think I heard footsteps once. Never saw anybody. We went inside and there was a cracked stone altar, and behind it was a smaller pedestal. Loki acted like he was listening to the Casket again, then he went up and set it on the pedestal. He said something that I didn't hear, and then he stepped back."

"And what else happened?" asked Odin.

She shrugged. "There was a… vibration," she said. "It could have been sound, but it was too low-pitched for me to hear. The Casket started to glow a little brighter, and then the pedestal it was sitting on started to light up. Nothing flashy, just this… gradual spread of light. It reminded me of the way the change, from your people to Jotun, moves across Loki's skin. We stayed long enough to see the glow reach the floor, and then once it started to fan out from there he said we needed to go, so we did."

"It was… quite beautiful," said Loki softly. "There was indeed a vibration, though I think it is something only a Jotun could fully appreciate, because I lost my ability to apprehend it as I shifted back to this form. It was a new sense, something partway between tactile and auditory. There were carvings, in the rock and the ice, dulled with the passage of time, but as the magic of the Casket touched them they seemed to awaken, and to… to _sing_, if that is the right term for it. I could feel the power in them; runes of protection and blessing, I think, based on what I could grasp of the harmonics. Quite sophisticated, actually." He had finished eating as Natasha gave her report, and now he made the banana leaf vanish with an absent-minded gesture.

"We can feel the change, even now," said the Norns. "You have treated an ancient wound, guardian, and now it can begin finally to heal."

"You were not accosted? Stopped?" asked Odin.

"We were there less than fifteen minutes," said Widow, shaking her head.

"We saw no one," said Loki, "although I agree with Agent Romanov that there were footsteps. I believe we were observed, but as we were not obviously armed, they saw no need to stop us. Also there was the small matter wherein I was openly carrying their realm's most sacred artifact back to its proper resting place, for any to observe who were present."

"How did you end up on earth?" Hawkeye asked Natasha, but it was Loki who answered.

"We moved out of sight of the temple, to the place where we'd first arrived, and I suggested to the lady that perhaps a warmer climate might be helpful for her, and also a bite to eat, to recover from the bitter cold."

"Pretty sure we were below minus twenty-five Celsius," said Natasha.

Steve leaned over toward Tony. "That's… sorry, what is that in Fahrenheit again?"

"About ten below. Cold."

"What was the, uh… sky walking… what was it like?" Bruce wanted to know, as he pushed the paper bag across the table to Steve.

"If you wish to experience it for yourself," said Loki, "I could return you to Midgard safely, after we are finished here. It might be best for you to avoid the… _excitement _of travel by Bifrost, given your condition." He said it neutrally enough, but Tony got the impression he wasn't expecting anybody to take him up on the offer, like, ever.

"It was… weird," said Romanov, after a second's thought. "Like there were things going on that our brains aren't built to process, so it just sort of filled in where it could. I don't know that I can trust what I think I saw, or heard, or felt."

"I am told that is often the case, for those who do not carry seidr in their veins," said Loki. "I suspect your friend the shape shifter will have a vastly different experience from what you perceived." He glanced over at the big glass statue, waiting patiently to the side. "For now, however, we must set the topic aside and return to the scheduled entertainment."

As he had done at the beginning, Loki rested his palm on the table and spread his fingers, and once again the projection of Yggdrasil, weaving through the space between galaxies, appeared before them. "We'll use the simpler representation of the Bifrost, a tunnel through space, to illustrate what happened when I tried to end my life."

Thor still flinched a little, every time Loki said that; Loki noticed out of the corner of his eye and rested his free hand on Thor's arm. Then he made a little twitch with his fingers, and an arc appeared that curved between the topmost glowing orb in the tree, and another one farther down.

Loki looked at the image for a second, then heaved a deep sigh. "When Thor and I fought, the Bifrost was open. There was already a tunnel created, between here and Jotunheim. You may recall that earlier I said that the Bifrost must remain anchored or its motion cannot be controlled?" Nods all around. "When Thor destroyed the Bifrost, this tunnel still existed, but it was no longer anchored. It began to collapse, yes, but also to do… something like this."

He lifted one finger off the table, and the arc began to whip wildly, like a fire hose that didn't have anyone holding onto it. The end nearest the top began to fall downward, while the far end flailed through space.

"I fell into that," said Loki, and Thor swallowed heavily, like he was about to be sick. Even Odin looked a little uncomfortable. "I ought to have died immediately, yet somehow I did not. I can only assume the Norns were involved in that."

"Where did you land?" asked Natasha, and Loki took another deep breath.

"I didn't." To their skeptical looks, he gave a little scoff, and said, "Oh, please, surely at least one of you must recognize the _odds _of that tunnel finding a habitable world and latching onto it."

"Well, yeah, except if you didn't land on a planet then you were floating in hard vacuum," said Bruce, "and I can't help but notice that you're still alive."

Loki's lip quirked. "Your conclusion is correct," he said, "and I can only surmise that my seidr must have acted without my conscious volition, in my desperation, and done _something_ which allowed me to survive. I could barely breathe, but I never truly suffocated. It was cold beyond anything I have ever experienced, yet I never quite froze. I could hear and see nothing, and fell endlessly… I have no idea whether it was for seconds or months. I have a suspicion that, as the Bifrost is a distortion of space, it distorted the passage of time as well, and I was… trapped within that distortion. Perhaps I was only in that state for a few seconds, and survived thusly, but what I perceived felt far, far longer."

He swallowed once, and let the image wink out as he reached for the bottle of liquor, but Thor grabbed his wrist. "I speak from experience, brother," he said, "when I tell you that a little drink will soothe painful memories, but too much will make them haunt you."

"Perhaps I should place myself under an enchantment, then, to find some other way to relate all this while not having to care." Loki swallowed again, and Tony thought he looked a little paler than usual.

"You can stop if you—"

"No. No, I cannot. If I stop I will never resume, whether the Norns demand it of me or no."

Thor looked upset, but his only response was to scoot closer to Loki so that they were pressed together from shoulder to hip, and to drape his arm over his brother's shoulders. Loki shut his eyes briefly, then continued, far too sober for someone who'd drunk as much as Tony had watched him put away.

"I fell," he said quietly, "and even though my heart was full of shame and despair, even though I had truly intended to die and had not yet succeeded, there was some part of me that wanted to survive. So I reached out with my… with my gift, and to my relief I was able to sky walk, even in that lightless void. I stepped, or fell, or crawled, out of the emptiness and onto a branch of the World Tree… only to discover, to my shock, that it was not the World Tree I knew."

"How could you tell?" asked Bruce.

"Yggdrasil, as I perceive it, is gold and life, and has a… a certain song to it, one might say. It feels warm to me," he said. "Whereas this was cold, and metallic like tarnished silver; its music was dissonant to my ears. It… there was a flow of life there, but it was not the life of which I had always been part. Something like catching a fish and tossing it onto dry land. There is nothing wrong with dry land, it's a perfectly hospitable environment for any creature that is adapted to it, but the fish _isn't_. I…" he swallowed again, and his voice was hollow when he spoke again. "I suffered." His hands twitched on the table, and he forced a little more strength into his voice. "Purely academically, I believe that given time I may have been able to adjust, to draw seidr from that tree as I do Yggdrasil, but at that time…" He broke off, looking at his hands. "I suffered."

"In truth, guardian, you had already begun to adapt," said She. "It has made you, as a seidmadr, even stronger than you were before your fall."

"Has it?" asked Loki, seemingly disinterested.

"You have not yet had opportunity to explore the limits of your abilities," said the Norns. Tony blinked, because… everything they'd gone through in New York, the way he'd just basically _walked _some impossible number of light-years, that wasn't even a stretch for the guy? Good _god _he wanted to get Loki into a lab at some point. "Were you to return to that Tree of your own will, uninjured and not under duress, we think you would find yourself more comfortable than you may now expect."

Loki gave a little nod, and a little shrug. "In any case," he said, "the branches of a World Tree are meant to be traveled, but they are not a place to live, nor even to camp. They are not truly a place at all. I had no choice but to follow my path inward, using my personal reserves of seidr to survive, since I could not replenish myself from a Tree filled with such foreign energy. I groped my way as best I could to a branch that hinted at land, and air, and… and _habitat_. I—" Loki stopped, a little frown creasing his brow. "No one has asked me to articulate what sky walking is, before now, and I find that I am having difficulty finding the right words. I sought a place where I would be able to survive, and followed the, the _feel_ of the branches until I found one."

His lips thinned for a second, and he seemed to lean a little harder into Thor's side. "It would have been better, had I not."

* * *

><p><strong>Notes:<strong>

**1. Curried fish is tasty. (I've been eating a lot of curry lately.)**

**2. Bergen Bagels is a real place, I looked them up. They're listed as one of the best bagel places in all of New York City. Apparently the dill cream cheese is a thing they do, too.**

**3. Ban Mi is a real place, which I also looked up because I wanted a small town for him to talk about. The population is somewhere around 3500 people. (The old lady is fictional, but I wouldn't be surprised if someone like her existed.)**

**4. Natasha's Russian translates as, "My God, you braggart" because that was the closest Google Translate could get me to "showoff."**

**5. I love all your reviews and follows. :)**

**6. I'm also looking for anyone interested in doing "cover art" or whatever it's called, for this or any other of my stories. Proper credit will be given.**


	13. Chapter 13

Thor looked upset at that statement, as he always did when his kid brother talked about being better off dead, no surprise. He squeezed Loki's shoulders, but the other man seemed not to notice.

Loki had begun to fidget with his hands, the fingers tangling and untangling, and when he realized it he drew his hands into his lap where he wouldn't be able to give himself away. "When I finally came out of the branches and onto that world, I was… unwell. Damaged. The foreign energies of that World Tree, the travel through a collapsing Bifrost… I was _not right_." He huffed a sorrowful little laugh. "Such an understated euphemism, but it is the only way to describe it. Things were _wrong_ within me—altered, misshapen, _strange_—in both my body and my mind." He shook his head a little. "It did not help that my emotional state had gone from madness to despair to terror and panic in such a relatively short span of time. I was barely aware or capable of conscious thought by the time I crawled out of the branches of that Tree and onto solid, real ground."

Tony grimaced at the thought; across from him, Widow was nodding as if Loki's description made perfect sense. Well, but she had been the only human to go sky walking with him, and she'd said it was weird. Tony could see how maybe something like that could turn into a total mindfuck under the wrong circumstances.

"How likely is that to be the truth?" Bruce asked Odin, looking uncomfortable. Loki sent an annoyed look his way, but said nothing.

"We believed Loki to have died in the collapse of the energies that powered the Bifrost," said Odin. "That he lived at all was a miracle. To be damaged in such a way is entirely plausible. In fact, I would be far more suspicious of the veracity of Loki's tale if he were to claim that the journey left him unscathed."

"Your wholehearted support is so _gratifying_, All-Father."

Bruce nodded, and turned back to Loki. "Look, sorry if this offends you. At this point you're not in Asgard anymore, and there, uh, there isn't anyone to corroborate your story."

Loki seemed to concede the point with a tired little nod. The whole bit where nobody ever believed him probably got old, Tony figured, although, seriously, the guy had to about expect that from this audience.

"Nobody but the Norns," Tony said, and Loki paused, halfway to speaking again, to blink at him bemusedly.

"I was found, by the inhabitants of that world," he went on, as if the little interruption hadn't occurred; "they were… not unkind, at least not from what little I can remember of them. But you recall how I described the Nine Realms to you, interconnected by the energies of Yggdrasil so that all our alien species are remarkably similar?" He glanced up at them, taking in their expressions. "There was no such similarity to protect me there. We could not communicate, even when I was capable of it. I could only ingest water; all other attempts at sustenance were useless at best, poisonous at worst. I might have been able to heal, they might have been able eventually to discover how best to provide me with care, but…" He trailed off, and Tony was close enough to see the fine tremor that rippled through him.

Thor, still being squished up against him, naturally noticed it too. "What happened, brother?" he asked softly.

Loki took several breaths before answering. "That world, as it turned out, was under the dominion of… I called him the Other. The, the creature whose image the Three Sisters showed you, in the throne room. The one who they claim is dead, now." He swallowed heavily. "That world, the inhabitants, were mostly left in peace, but if something unusual happened, it was certain to be reported to local officials, who would report it to their superiors and so on, and eventually the news would catch the attention of more powerful beings, not so harmless beings. The sudden appearance of an unknown creature such as myself certainly qualified as _unusual._"

He took another breath, harsh enough that everyone at the table heard it, and noticed how it shook on the inhale. "I was eventually transported away from where those people first found me, and brought before the Other, who… recognized something in my form, perhaps, something like, like having five fingers instead of six; I know not, but there was something that helped the Other realize I dwelt in the Tree from which the Titan had been banished. I only know that the Other determined that I might be of _value_ to them, and he brought me before his master. The Titan." Loki's face was a sickly gray as he added, "Between the two of them, they… managed to subdue me, to render me… susceptible to them."

And oh-ho boy, if Loki wasn't leaving a hell of a lot of out of his story with that understatement, Tony would eat his suit.

"Subdued how?" asked Steve, and his voice even carried a hint of concern, but Loki didn't seem to hear it.

"I am not giving you that," he said, looking up. "The Norns themselves may strike me down if they wish, but I am _not_ giving you that." Another shaky breath seemed to help calm him down, a little, maybe. "I was barely coherent at the time, in any case," he said. "What was—what was done to me then would not succeed now."

Tony wondered just whom the guy was trying to convince.

Sweat began to bead at Loki's temples, and Tony heard his feet shuffle under the table. "The Titan looked upon the Other's offering, and was pleased," he said hoarsely. "Half-mad; half-starved, by that point; crippled—bound. H-he was _pleased, _because after I was powerless, he was able to look within my mind and discover precisely whence I had come… and what I could do."

"Sorcery?" asked Thor.

"Sky walking," answered Natasha, and Loki _flinched._

Yep, Tony thought. Called it.

"How was Thanos able to look within your mind?" asked Odin. For once, he didn't sound accusatory or disbelieving. "This was not a skill he was known to possess, when he was cast out of the Nine."

"Until quite recently he had custody of the Mind Gem," said Loki, and this time Thor was the one to jolt, his eyes wide as he stared at Loki.

"The scepter."

"Yes," whispered Loki.

"He—he used the scepter on you, brother?" Thor looked fretful, and Tony could figure why. If Loki was being controlled, then he was technically innocent, the same way they'd all worked to reassure Barton that he wasn't responsible either. "You were under his control, when you came to Midgard?"

Oh, hey, there was Clint's laser glare of absolute loathing.

"Not in the way you mean," said Loki. "Not at all like what I did to Agent Barton."

"I should fucking hope not," Clint spat the words at him. "You don't get to claim you're any kind of victim after what you did to me."

"Yes, because it's all so cut-and-dried in the world of _spies and assassins_," spat Loki, no longer looking quite so traumatized. "All the heroes are saints, and the villains are the purest evil, and never do they walk any common ground in between." He leaned forward, eyes locked on Hawkeye's like some kind of predator. "Do you have any idea what it is like to be _unmade_, Agent Barton?"

Huh. Both he and Natasha sat up straight and looked shocked.

"Yeah," said Hawkeye. "Thanks to you."

"Oh, _no_," said Loki, beginning to smile manically in a way far, _far _too reminiscent of the caged lunatic he'd been on the Helicarrier. "No, I did nothing of the _kind_ to you, Agent Barton. Not even _close._"

"Yeah, you know, I don't really give a good _goddamn_ how _you_ define the—"

"Do your friends still recognize you, Agent Barton?" asked Loki, in a voice like silk. "Your colleagues, those whom you trust, who know you well. Do they look upon you and see a man drastically changed from who you were before we crossed paths? Or are you still Clinton Francis Barton to them? Agent, sniper, Hawkeye. Do they still recognize you?"

Barton said nothing, lips pressed together, nostrils flared, eyes wide with fear and hate.

"I barely _touched_ you with the scepter's power," said Loki, his predator's gaze unwavering, "and that was a deliberate choice on my part. Your fundamental personality was left unchanged. Your skills, your interests, your ability to plan and execute an operation… I did nothing to you except alter your loyalties. When you were released from the scepter's control, that single alteration was able to snap back to its original position. You are now as you have always been, because _I_ made certain such a recovery would be _possible_." He leaned farther forward, his hands gripping the edge of the table like talons, as he bared his teeth. "You know _nothing _of what it is to be unmade!"

"Don't you dare take fucking _credit _for me breaking out of your voodoo _bullshit_—"

"Did you know," said Loki in a deadly quiet voice that belied the way he'd begun to quiver again, "that the two most primal, most fundamental emotions are fear and desire?" He drew back a little, looked around the table and met their eyes, one by one. "Aversion, or attraction; toward, or away; fear and desire are the impulses that drive every living being. Even the simplest life forms will move _toward_ food and _away _from danger. Even the simplest life forms, therefore, have a _mind_, however rudimentary it may be_._ And the Mind Gem, in the hands of the Titan, can reach those fundamental drives, and _rearrange_ them at will."

For much of Loki's story so far, he'd looked at nobody in particular, especially while he was going over the difficult parts. If he was irritated, or if someone asked him a question, he'd look at them directly, but then he'd go back to staring into space, or at the table, or at his hands. Now, though, he refused to look away, nor to let them do the same. He was shaking and sweating, and seemed unaware of both, but he would not let them look away.

"The Titan used the scepter, while I was powerless, to see into my thoughts, to _pick_ through my memories like a ravening scavenger. He learned… _everything,"_ he said with a shudder. "Most pleasing to him was the realization that I not only came from the World Tree from which he'd been cast out, but that I could, theoretically at least, travel back there under my own power. No portals," he said, looking at the captain. He turned to Bruce. "No _machines_." And then back to Hawkeye. "How very _useful _to him such a skill would be."

He looked at Odin next, his eyes holding all the weariness of a man who did not expect to be believed. "Unfortunately, he also discovered that I, as a prince of this realm and briefly its king, have sworn oaths, binding oaths, to protect the Nine. Further, he learned that as a seidmadr I was most powerful _within_ Yggdrasil, and virtually helpless on _his_ world, at his feet." He sat back, finally, taking a long, slow breath. "So he, and the Other, set themselves to the task of…" He stopped, swallowed convulsively.

"Persuading you," Tony said, his voice flattened under the weight of his own memories.

"Reshaping me," Loki corrected, and he and Thor shuddered together; Loki's skin was a sickly shade, his eyes rimmed with red. "However valuable I might be, I was not much _use_ to him in my damaged state; and should I somehow manage to heal, I would no doubt try to defy him. So he used the Mind Gem. Painstakingly, with precision… _over and over_ again. Fear, and desire…"

He looked at Thor briefly, turning his head as little as possible, as if he didn't want to be thought of as a weakling for needing his brother to lean on. Meanwhile his brother looked like he could barely keep it together enough to support Loki like he wanted to. "The Titan took the sum total of my mind—_my_ fears and desires, _my_ interests, my likes and dislikes, long-held loves and hatreds—and broke those components apart like a Midgarder _jigsaw puzzle_, filing the edges off the pieces and rearranging them in a manner more pleasing to him; putting them back together to create an entirely new personality. And then the Other would test that personality, to see if it was useful to his master, torment it to see how it would respond… and when they were satisfied that they understood that, that _configuration _completely, then the Titan would break it apart, and begin anew.

"Do your friends still recognize you, Agent Barton? By the time I came to your world, my own _family _did not recognize me. You have not the _faintest idea_ of what it means to be unmade."

Tony was feeling a little sick to his stomach. Even during the worst of Afghanistan, he'd still been himself; scared, yes, and yes, he'd broken, proven himself trainable through fear and pain, but he'd still been _Tony_. When he came home, traumatized and transformed, he'd still been himself. Pepper, Rhodey, Happy, they all still recognized him.

But Loki, under the Titan's control? How much of him was even still _Loki_, the Loki that Thor and his family all knew?

"I lost _count_ of how many different people I became," rasped Loki. "I know at one time I was as a child, desperate and weeping for my mother; I remember another personality who abhorred seidr, rejected it and was disgusted that it flowed through my veins. There was a time when I hated Thor, and another when I was so indifferent to him, both like and dislike so thoroughly annulled, that all my centuries of memories were meaningless to me, and he was of no more importance to me than a complete stranger. Then there was the persona wherein my brotherly love for him was twisted until I _lusted_ for him, like a wanton minx." His eyes slid shut at that, and his face flushed red with shame. Thor, sitting pressed up against his side, looked positively ill.

"Again, and again, I was remade, tortured into submission, and then taken apart… One version of me was terrified of literally everything, pissing myself at the sound of my own voice. The potential combinations of traits were virtually limitless, and it seemed as though the Titan explored them all. Destroyed them, then broke the pieces apart, and started again. And the worst…" A tear slid out from under his closed lids and dripped down. "The worst was that in the act of re-breaking me each time, there was always a moment in which I remembered who I _truly_ was. And in that moment I would _feel_ myself being destroyed, and I would _know_ that it had happened before, and would know myself to be _utterly _powerless to stop it."

He opened his eyes again, shaking and hoarse, and stared Barton down. "They did not recognize _me, Hawkeye, _not the way your friends do you. I was entirely _unfamiliar_ to them—unfamiliar to _myself_—entirely out of character, and not one of them even thought to wonder _why!"_

Tony had been so focused on Loki's story he hadn't paid enough attention to how it had to be affecting his big brother. Which was a mistake, because everyone in the room jumped, even Odin, when Thor came roaring to his feet. Like, literally roaring; there weren't any words that Tony could make out, just a seriously pissed-off thunder god bellowing like a bull about to charge. He stomped his way out onto the balcony, and Tony got a glimpse of a sky that was no longer sunny before a blinding flash of lightning dazzled him. The crack of thunder was immediate, so close by that it shook the room and damn near made Tony's ears ring. Wind howled in from the balcony, nearly putting out the fire in the center of the room, and as Thor roared again the rain began to come down in _sheets_. Blowing _sideways_.

Clint was hoisting Bruce to his feet and looking like he was going to head for a tornado shelter or something, while Bruce was doing his best to shake him off. Tony's science bro looked surprised but not actually distressed enough to bring out Green and Mean. So there was that, at least.

Steve had to shout to be heard over the wind and rain. "Is there anything we should do?"

Odin shook his head. "Only wait. He will not harm us."

"You sure about that?" yelled Barton, and as another stroke of lightning hit so close it made their hair stand on end, Tony had to agree. After a couple years' worth of battles, they all had thought they'd seen the limits of Surfer Dude's temper. This, however, was a whole other kettle of fish. Tony reached for his helmet, where he'd left it sitting and recording on the table.

Thor was leaning on the balcony rail now, arms spread wide, shoulders heaving; his grip looked like he'd be able to tear apart the stone with his bare hands. There was another strobe-light flash, another crash of thunder like the sky was ripping apart, as his cloak billowed in the gale, and he screamed his rage to the sky.

Then he turned, and stalked back into the room, and Tony _distinctly_ heard Loki say, in a little singsong, "Oh, shit…"

Thor's teeth were bared in a seriously terrifying grimace, and as he hauled Loki out of his seat and clear off the floor by the lapels of his coat, there was actual plasma arcing and snapping and crawling up his arms from his clenched fists. The man's eyes—okay, no, fine, the _god's_ eyes—were glowing an eerie white.

Loki looked into the face of all that rage and only seemed a little _nervous. _His hands were clutching at Thor's wrists, and some of the stray electricity _had _to be zapping him too, based on the way the muscles in his arms and face kept twitching and his hair was standing out in a static cloud; but he kept his breathing more or less steady from what Tony could see, and his eyes were only a little wider than usual.

"Swear to me," growled the Lord of Storms, "_swear _to me that you are not lying."

"I speak the truth," Loki replied quickly, his voice hitching as lightning arced between his chest and Thor's. "I swear it. I swear, brother. I'm sorry. I'm sor—"

"You're _sorry?_" Thor seemed to explode, and Tony could see the moment when Loki decided he was about to take a pounding, the way his throat worked to swallow but his eyes just looked _resigned, _like this was a scene they'd played out hundreds of times before.

Only that wasn't what happened.

"_You're_ sorry?! The Titan and his _beasts_ _tortured_ you beyond the point of _sanity_ and you survived it, and we didn't even _see_ it—and _you're_ the one who thinks to apologize? You were imprisoned like a common thief—" He set Loki down, more or less carefully, meaning Loki only stumbled back a pace instead of landing on his ass or getting thrown across the room. Thor whirled to face his father as another gust of wind blew into the room. "Tell me you knew of this," he demanded. "_Tell me you knew he suffered!"_

"And what would you have me say, hm?" Odin sounded like he was tolerating a kid throwing a tantrum, Jesus. "If I tell you I knew, you will demand to know why I imprisoned him. If I tell you I didn't—"

"_Answer my question, old man!" _and, oh, hey, the far end of the table just exploded. Bruce was already headed to the exit, Steve covering the others, while Tony ducked, and powered up the suit's EMP dampeners.

"He did not," said the Norns, in what was possibly the worst timing for getting involved in a family fight _ever_. Tony got hold of Loki's arm and tried to pull him toward the door, but Loki just shook him off with a glare.

"Did you even think to ask?" Thor demanded.

"There was no reason to believe—"

_"Did you ask!"_

Odin drew himself up to his full height. "No."

With another guttural roar, Thor pulled his fist back, as if he were going to punch the old guy from fifteen feet away. Light gathered around him in a blue-white nimbus of energy; he swung—

In the blinding light, Tony caught just the barest silhouette of Loki, leaping forward to collide with his brother's outstretched fist.

* * *

><p><strong>Had a kinda dull scene this chapter, and then realized that it was falling flat because I wasn't paying attention to how the other characters would react to what Loki was saying. He was just sitting their droning on, which isn't like him either. And then Thor explained that he would find Loki's information a bit distressing. So, once again, an unplanned scene.<strong>

**Updating a little ahead of schedule on this one since the response on Chapter 12 was diminished and I was worried maybe I was boring you.**


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